572 
in the summer generation of caprifigs 
(mammoni), although Count Solms-Lau- 
bach found only twenty seeds in forty 
mammoni. Perhaps one flower in 2,000 is 
female, the others being gall flowers. 
Then, too, there is a fig, called Erinosyche, 
which according to Pontedera bears pro- 
fichi like a caprifig, and then a summer 
generation of ordinary edible figs ; also the 
Croisic fig of Brittany and the Cordelia fig 
of California, which have a zone of male 
flowers above the ordinary edible part. 
This upper portion of the fig, bearing the 
male flowers, remains tough and inedible. 
Such abnormalities have, however, many 
analogies in other groups of plants, and do 
not obscure the fact that the edible fig is, as 
Hegardt contended in 1744, the female form, 
and the caprifig the male form of a dicecious 
species. The remarkable feature of the fig 
is that its male receptacles bear gall flowers 
which are only slightly modified female 
flowers, and that these gall flowers harbor 
insects which pollinate the female fig 
flowers, and lay eggs in succeeding genera- 
tions of caprifigs. The symbiosis is doubt- 
less one of the oldest known, all of the 
hundreds of species of figs being inhabited 
by insects of a special family, Agaonide, 
which are all remarkably adapted to their 
peculiar habitat, while the figs appear as if 
specially constructed to nourish and protect 
the insects on which they are completely 
dependent for pollination. Both the in- 
sects and the plants are much more pro- 
foundly modified than are, for example, the 
Yucca and its moth, Pronuba. 
CAPRIFICATION. 
Herodotus (484-408 B. C.) seems to have 
known caprification, and Aristotle about 
340 B. C., gave a perfectly clear account of 
it as follows:* ‘The figs of the caprifig 
contain small animals which are called 
psenes. These are at first small grubs, and 
* History of Animals, Book 5, ch. 26, p. 4. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 251, 
when their envelopes are broken, psenes 
which fly come out; they then enter the 
fruits of the fig tree; and the punctures 
which they make there prevent these fruits 
from falling before they are ripe. So the 
countrymen take the trouble to put 
branches of the caprifig in the ordinary fig 
trees, and also plant caprifigs near the com- 
mon fig trees.’”’ Theophrastus, his pupil, 
gave a more extended account, and for the 
first time noted that not all sorts of figs 
needed caprification. 
This operation as now practiced consists 
in suspending in the fig trees strings of ripe 
caprifigs of the spring generation, contain- 
ing the fig insects ready to emerge. The 
spring generation caprifigs, or profichi, are 
ripe in June or July, just when the young 
edible figs are large enough to allow the in- 
sect to enter the mouth, and when the 
female flowers are receptive. These spring 
generation caprifigs contain abundant male 
flowers, so that when the insects leave them 
and enter the young figs they carry pollen 
to the receptive female flowers. It should 
be noted that the insect is unable to lay her 
eggs in the normal female flower of the 
edible fig, and frequently dies within it. 
The female fig tree is therefore a death trap 
for the individual insect, although provid- 
ing indirectly for a future supply of capri- 
figs. It thus appears that with these in- 
sects the less discriminating individual is 
the benefactor of the species. Only a few 
insects enter a single fig. 
Caprification has been known for at least 
2,300 years in the Eastern Mediterranean, 
and is still universally practiced in the fig 
regions about Aidin (near Smyrna) in 
Asiatic Turkey, at Kalamata in Western 
Greece, and in Kabylia, Northern Africa, 
the three greatest centers of production of 
dried figs. It is also frequent in Sicily, 
South Italy and Spain, but is not possible 
in cold countries near the northern limit of 
fig culture, because the insect could not 
