BIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF FIGS. 949 



For the oldest written record of caprification we must 

 go to the oldest Greek writers. Aristotle, the teacher of 

 Alexander, and one of the best-informed scholars of an- 

 cient times, describes caprification in very much the same 

 way as it is practiced to this day. Aristotle explains the 

 effect of caprification through the bite of the wasp, which 

 causes the air to enter the fig, etc. He, as well as all 

 writers, for a period of 2000 years or until the time of 

 Linnaeus, were unable to give a true explanation of the 

 effects of caprification (52). 



The most minute description of caprification as prac- 

 ticed and understood by the ancients is given by Theo- 

 phrast (53). Not only does he correctly describe the 

 process of caprification, but he informs us of certain facts 

 of great interest. One of these is thaf there are two races 

 of figs, one which requires caprification in order to set 

 fruit, and one which sets fruit without caprification. Theo- 

 phrast was the first one to point out this, and he must have 

 learned it through observation of the various fig varieties 

 grown at his time. Another statement made by this 

 writer is to the effect that caprificated figs had a lesser 

 commercial value than figs not thus caprificated (54). 

 Whatever may have been the case at his time, it is not so 

 now. If Theophrast's statement is correct it can be ex- 

 plained by the Smyrna tribe not thriving in Greece, or by 

 their unimproved state at that time. 



Theophrast also mentions how ignorant cultivators in- 

 stead of using caprifigs suspended other substances in the 

 trees, such as galls from elm trees, the peasant believing 

 that the wasps emerging from these elm galls would have 

 the same effect as fig wasps. Of course if the fig tree in 

 which they were suspended belonged to a race which did not 

 require caprification, the effect of either varieties of wasps 

 (or of any other foreign substance) would be the same or 



