BIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF FIGS. 95 1 



Through all the medieeval ages, or for over fifteen hun- 

 dred years after Pliny, horticulture and natural science 

 made little progress, and the opinions of the ancient 

 writers were adopted as regards almost all points of human 

 knowledge. So also their theories about caprification. 

 For fifteen hundred years after Pliny this process was 

 practiced by the cultivators of the soil in the same way 

 as in the time of ancient Greece; no one was found to 

 inquire in its nature and value, much less to solve the 

 enigma of this, the most interesting of all horticultural 

 usages of all times. 



In 1583, Caesalpinus discovered the sexual organs of 

 plants and was able to point out their functions, but his 

 discovery bore no fruit as regards a better understanding 

 of caprification, and all writers after him for nearly two 

 hundred years followed the teachings of Theophrast, 

 Pliny and Plutarch. 



In the early part of the eighteenth century two botanists 

 occupied themselves with a closer study of the fig. One 

 of them was Giulio Pontedera (56), who was the first one 

 to describe the flowers of the caprilig and their structure, 

 though he did not recognize their sexal nature. He 

 also studied the fig wasps and caprification, but little sus- 

 pected the true nature and influence of the wasp. Pon- 

 tedera ascribes the effects of caprification to the bitings 

 of the wasps, which cause the air and light to enter the 

 fig. This is the more remarkable when we consider how 

 very minute are the wounds caused by even a large quan- 

 tity of wasps. As seldom more than very few wasps 

 enter one fig, it will be seen that the extra air that can 

 penetrate on account of the wasp bites is very small in- 

 deed, if any at all. 



Another investigator, one of the most prominent bot- 

 anists of the early part of the eighteenth century, was 



