ORGANS OF REPRODUCTION. 



59 



the part tliat is commonly called the fruit is 

 fonned before the flower expands. But when 

 it is recollected that this alleged fruit is merely 

 a fleshy receptacle, and that the seed, the only 

 essential part of the fruit, is not developed till 

 after the expansion of the flower, the seeming 

 exception vanislics. The fruit-bearing individ- 

 uals of such species as have their barren and 

 fertile flowers on distinct plants, do not perfect 

 their fruit, except where individuals of both 

 sorts are sustained in the vicinity of one another. 

 This observation is confirmed not onlj^ by the 

 testimony of the ancients, and their manner of 

 cultivating the palm and fig tree, but also by the 

 additional observations of the moderns. Father 

 Labat, a French ecclesiastic, who had undertaken 

 a voyage to the West Indian islands, about the 

 year 1745, says, that when he was in the island 

 of Jlartinique, there was then growing near the 

 monastery of the order to which he belonged, a 

 female date tree which bore fruit though single, 

 there being no other tree of the same species 

 within two leagues of it ; but he adds, that the 

 stones of the dates it produced did not germinate. 

 It is plain therefore, that the fruit was not per- 

 fect, though it might have been apparently com- 

 plete. A female plant of the cycas revoluta, in 

 the possession of the bishop of Winchester, pro- 

 duced also fruit though single ; but the drupi, 

 which was externally and apparently complete, 

 was found, when dissected by Sir J. Smith, to 

 be internally very defective ; for, in place of the 

 embryo, the most important part of the whole, 

 all that could be discovered was only a minute 

 cavity, which defect Sir J. Smith rightly attri- 

 butes to tlie want of the vicinity of a plant fur- 

 nished with male flowers, which, he adds, was 

 perhaps not to be found nearer than Japan. The 

 fruit then is perfected by means of some sub- 

 stances conveyed from the barren to the fertUe 

 flower, and capable, as it appears, of being trans- 

 mitted through the medium of the atmosphere, 

 if the respective plants are situated in the vicinity 

 of each other. But in the case of the fig tree, 

 vicinity is not even enough, the structure of the 

 fruit being such as to require a peculiar 

 mode of transmission ; for the fruit of the fig is 

 not, as in most other cases, a pericarp enveloping 

 the seed, but a common calyx or receptacle, en- 

 closing the flowers ; this may be readily seen by 

 means of cutting a fig in two, in the direction 

 of the longitudinal axis of the fruit, in the centre 

 of which there will be found a cavity lined with 

 a multitude of flowers, the male and female 

 blossoms being generally in different figs, and in 

 distinct plants ; the medium of communication 

 between them being only a small aperture at the 

 summit of the receptacle. Hence, the access of 

 the substance necessary to impregnation, is ren- 

 dered impracticable in the ordinary mode of 

 transmission. But nature is not without a re- 



source, even in this difficulty. For in Greece 

 and Italy, and the islands belonging to them, 

 the native country of figs, a species of insect of 

 the genus Cy nips, which is continually fluttering 

 about from fig to fig, for the purpose of deposit- 

 ing its eggs in the cavity, carries the substance 

 necessary to impregnation from the male to the 

 female flower. But the substance which it 

 carries is the pollen of the anthers, with which 

 it becomes covered all over in rummaging through 

 a variety of receptacles, till it finds one to please 

 it. The pollen then is the substance by which 

 the impregnation of the female flower is effected, 

 and the whole of the phenomena of the growth, 

 and economy of flowering, tends to corroborate 

 the fact. In Italy and the Levant, where the 

 fig is much cultivated, the cultivator insures or 

 facilitates the agency of the insect, by present- 

 ing it to the fig at the time proper for impreg- 

 nation, and the service he thus performs is called 

 caprification. If the stamens or pistils of flowers, 

 are destroyed by cultivation, or injured by rain 

 or frost, or by the operation of any other natural 

 cause, the process of impregnation is interrupted 

 or prevented, and the fruit deteriorated or di- 

 minished in quantity or quality. Sometimes 

 they are wholly obliterated by means of culti- 

 vation, as in the case of double flowers, in which 

 the stamens degenerate into petals, and the pistil 

 not unfrequently into a leaf; but in this case 

 it is well known that no flower produces perfect 

 seed. Sometimes they are injured by accidents 

 arising from weather, and even in such vegetables 

 as are the most serviceable for the food of man, 

 particularly in crops of grain ; but some sorts of 

 grains are much more liable to be injured by 

 such accidents than others. Crops of rye, for 

 instance, are much more liable to be injured by 

 heavy and continued rains than crops of barley, 

 because the anthers are better sheltered by the 

 husks of the latter than the former. But shrubs 

 and trees are affected in the same manner as the 

 plants now mentioned. It was observed by Lin- 

 niEus, that the juniper produces few or no berries 

 in Sweden if the flowering season is wet, and 

 that the cherry tree is much more liable to come 

 short of its annual crop than the pear tree, be- 

 cause in the latter the blossoms are unfolded, 

 and the stamens and pistils matured all about 

 the same time, so that the whole of them might 

 be blasted by the dews or frosts of a single 

 night. Whereas, in the former the blossoms are 

 unfolded, and the stamens and pistUs matured 

 by gradual and successive steps, so that if part 

 of them should happen to be destroyed by the 

 occurrence of a frosty morning, the rest may 

 escape. But the fruit is equally blasted whether 

 the injury is done to the stamens or to the pistils, 

 the stamens being the organs in which the impreg- 

 nating substance is contained, and the pistil 

 being the channel through which it is conveyed 



