948 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



inally wild, and wild at the time the first figs requiring 

 caprification were grown under cultivation. If the self- 

 setting fig race had been the one first introduced to Greece 

 then the Greeks would never have thought of caprifica- 

 tion, or if some uncommon genius had done so, he would 

 have been obliged to go to distant countries in order to 

 see, find and bring home the caprifig of which he could 

 otherwise have had no possible knowledge. The discov- 

 ery of caprification in Greece, as has been held by the 

 majority of investigators, except Solms, would be as im- 

 probable and as impossible as the discovery of the placer 

 mining of gold in a country where native gold only occurs 

 in solid veins of ore. Caprification must have originated 

 in a country where the caprifig was wild. But particu- 

 lars about the discovery will never be forthcoming, the 

 records having been forever lost. Even in the oldest 

 books of the Semitic races no mention is made of any 

 process which can with any certainty be explained as re- 

 ferring to caprification. As is stated elsew^here, in the 

 Book of Amos (50), we read of botes schiquaim, which 

 means "one who operates on the wild fig." But if this 

 operation refers to caprification, or to the oiling of the fig, 

 or to the yet common and necessary practice of cutting 

 the " Sycomore figs " with a knife in order to give an op- 

 portunity to their inquilines escape, will always remain 

 an uncertainty, with some probability that the last expla- 

 nation is the correct one. A circumstance which makes 

 it probable that caprification was in ver}^ ancient times 

 practiced in Asia is the fact that Syria is yet the country 

 which grows principally or almost exclusivel}^ figs re- 

 quiring caprification in order to set and mature. In 

 nearly all other countries other, though inferior, vari- 

 eties have been or are being substituted, varieties which 

 mature without pollination and caprification (51)- 



