924 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



not be ripe or mature. There are also other differences. 

 The Smyrna figs belong to the latter class, and they al- 

 ways contain ripe and fertile seeds. 



But, as the cultivated Smyrna fig never contains any 

 male, and as caprification with the wild fig is always re- 

 sorted to in order to cause the figs to mature, it is evident 

 that the seeds thus produced must, when growing, give 

 us hybrid plants, plants which more or less partake of 

 both parents, the wild as well as the Smyrna fig. 



Artificial pollination of figs is no new or remarkable 

 discovery. Gasparrini relates how (40) he repeatedly 

 introduced the pollen of the caprifig into the edible figs, 

 especially of the Lardaro variety. But his pollination 

 produced no decided results. No increase in the number 

 of fertile seeds was noticed, either because the flowers 

 of the Lardaro variety were principally mule flowers, on 

 which the pollen could have no ettect, or because the female 

 flowers had all been previously pollinated. From this 

 Gasparrini draws the illogical conclusion repeatedly quoted 

 by later writers, that the caprifig is of a different species 

 from the edible fig, that its pollen cannot influence or 

 fecundate the female flowers of the edible fig, and that 

 consequently the practice of caprification is illusionary 

 and of no value whatever. Gasparrini did not know of 

 the class of figs which I have designated as the Smyrna 

 type, and which, unlike any other class, produces prin- 

 cipally receptive female flowers, which do not produce 

 seed without the aid of pollen from the caprifig. Had 

 Gasparrini had opportunity to exten.d his interesting and 

 in detail going investigations to this class of figs, the con- 

 clusions to which he came would no doubt have been 

 greatly modified. 



The history of the Smyrna figs in California is intensely 

 interesting, and directly bearing upon this point of the 



