FIG. 157 



cessively bitter, and so acrid, burning, and corrosive, that 

 they curd milk, and dissolve that which is curded in the 

 same way as vinegar. It is so powerful as to take the 

 skin from the flesh, on which account some people use it 

 to remove werts from their hands : it also forms one of 

 the sympathetic inks, which are invisible till heated ; but 

 such are the wonderful proceedings of nature, that this 

 very juice produces one of our most agreeable, cooling, 

 sweet, and wholesome fruits. 



Figs should not be eaten until quite ripe, as the milky 

 juice is apt to cause dysenteries and fevers. Water is 

 the proper beverage to drink after eating this fruit, as it 

 dilutes the pulp, and corrects a certain inconvenient 

 saliva. The author has found great relief in a nervous 

 fever, from making fresh figs the principal of his diet. 



The figs which grow in the province of Ghilan in 

 Persia are very unwholesome and injurious, from the 

 great moisture of the earth in that place. The most de- 

 licate figs are those which grow in Sicily, called the 

 Neapolitan jig. It is a small black variety, that hangs 

 on the tree till January. 



At the Royal Gardens at Kew, there was a fig-house 

 fifty feet in length, where, under the superintendence of 

 Mr. Aiton, this fruit has been forced to the highest pitch 

 of perfection : Mr, Alton's chief reliance has been, we 

 understand, on the second crop. In the year 1810, the 

 royal tables were supplied with more than two hundred 

 baskets of figs from that fig-house, fifty baskets of which 

 were from the first cropland one hundred and fifty baskets 

 from the second. In one instance, Mr. Aiton had this 

 fruit ripe in January, and sent excellent figs to the palace 

 on the late Queen Charlotte's birth-day, the 18th of that 

 month. 



It is ascertained that housed figs prosper better where 

 they are heated by steam than by dry heat; and we have 



