952 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Tournefort. He traveled in the Levant and in Greece 

 and made special study of caprilication as practiced there. 

 Being well acquainted with fig culture in Provence, in 

 France, he was well qualified for his time to take up the 

 study of caprification. Tournefort had studied Theo- 

 phrast and tried to explain his statement about the lesser 

 value of the caprificated figs, through the necessity of 

 drying such caprificated figs in ovens which again cause 

 their aroma to disappear. As Solms-Laubach points 

 out Tournefort confounded the wasps with moths which 

 infest dried figs, just as so frequently happens in our day. 

 Tournefort describes the three crops of the caprifig, men- 

 tions the two races of the edible figs, of which one re- 

 quires caprification, while the other will set fruit without 

 it. The effects of caprification he explains in the same 

 way as every one before him, by the biting of the wasps, 

 which causes the superfluous juices to escape. Finally, 

 he mentions that a fig which in Provence without capri- 

 fication produces 25 pounds of figs, in the Island of Zea 

 gives 200 pounds (S7). A very unsatisfactory statement, 

 when we consider the distance of the two localities and 

 the uncertainty that the two trees were actually of the 

 same variety; not to speak of climate, soil, age, cultiva- 

 tion, etc. 



It was reserved for Linn^us to discover the true nature 

 of caprification (32). While previous to his time, the 

 nature of the sexes in flowers had been described and 

 generally accepted, still no one had thought of the pos- 

 sibility of an insect transmitting the pollen from one flower 

 to another and thus cause fecundation. As Pliny of old 

 had forshadowed the theory of evolution so did Linnasus 

 a century before its rediscovery indicate how, at least, in 

 one instance, flowers were dependent on insects for their 

 pollination. Linnaeus points out how, in order that the 



