42 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



with, the tongue. The cylinder is then slipped into the turned-up 

 end of the wire, and so adapted as to give the best result. This 

 adjustment is of great importance, and in order to facilitate it 

 the wire and burner are clamped separately to an upright rod 

 fixed in a firm base. Coal gas is generally used alone. By 

 increasing the pressure the brilliancy of the light is increased, 

 and if oxygen be used in conjunction with it the light is still 

 more intense. Mr. Ashe suggested that attention should be 

 given to some method of overcoming the drawbacks of the 

 uneven surface of the roll, although it is much less apparent in 

 the field of view than the mesh of an ordinary mantle. Mr. 

 Traviss described some very ingenious modifications of the 

 above lamp. In some of these he employed two or more jets, 

 impinging on the cylinder symmetrically in the same plane in 

 order to avoid one-sided pressure upon it. 



Mr. Traviss also described a very simple form in which the 

 burner was made from an ordinary burner having the holes 

 filled up with plaster of Paris and a minute hole made in the 

 side with a very fine needle after filing the side very thin in one 

 place. The cylinder is carried by a wire (any wire will do) wound 

 round the burner, and having its free end turned up at a right 

 angle in front of the hole. 



The President then called upon Mr. N. E. Brown to read his 

 paper on " The Fertilisation of Figs." Mr. Brown said that he 

 believed that the whole of the facts connected with the process 

 had not yet been discovered. It is generally incorrectly sup- 

 posed that insect aid is umiecessary, as good edible figs can be 

 produced without it ; but this is incorrect, for such figs contain 

 no fertile seeds. Normally figs have three kinds of flowers—the 

 common edible fig has also a fourth, an abortive, kind. The 

 male and female figs are borne on different trees. Fertilisation 

 has been carefully studied in Ficus Roxburghii and F. carica (the 

 edible fig), and in both these species it has been shown that 

 it cannot be effected by wind agency, but only by the intro- 

 duction of pollen into the cavity of the fig by the fig-insect or 

 by man. If the insect does not enter the fig tlie fiowers within 

 do not fully develop. In the case of F. Roxburghii (an Indian 

 species) the male tree bears two crops, and the female tree 

 two or more each year. From the bud to the time when the. 

 figs are ready for insects to enter is about two months for the 



