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crop to come to maturity, except where they 

 are housed. At the Royal Gardens at Kew, 

 there is 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, I 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 crop, and one hundred 

 and fifty baskets from the second. In one 

 instance, Mr. Alton had this fruit ripe in 

 January, and sent excellent figs to the palace 

 on the late Queen's birthday, the 18th of that 

 month. 



The caprification of figs was practised by 

 the ancients in the same manner as it is now 

 attended to by the inhabitants of the Archi- 

 pelago; and it is described by Theophrastus, 

 Plutarch, Pliny, and other authors of antiqui- 

 ty. It is too curious a circumstance in the 

 history of the fig-tree to be omitted, as it fur- 

 nishes a convincing proof of the reality of the 

 sexes of plants. The flowers of the fig-tree are 

 situated within the pulpy receptacle, which 

 we call the fruit. Of these receptacles, in the 

 wild fig-tree, some have male flowers only, 

 and others have male and female. 



