BIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF FIGS. 975 



to the ovipositor organs of the wasps, only female flowers 

 with long styles are found and which are otherwise so 

 modified that the wasps find it impossible to properly lay 

 their eggs. All their frantic efforts to penetrate the canal 

 of the style and to reach the fig ovary and its nucellus are 

 in vain. The Blastophaga cannot breed in any edible fig. 

 Still, her visit has a very great effect on the edible female 

 fig flowers, provided these are of the proper age and 

 development. The pollen from the caprifig, with which 

 the wasps were liberally dusted, adheres to the female 

 stigmas, the effect being pollination and fecundation of 

 the flowers. The Blastophaga herself dies and her dead 

 body may be seen upon opening a fig which has not 

 advanced too far in maturity. * , 



It is here assumed, as is really the case, that the wasp 

 cannot properly place its egg in the female flower, but 

 even if she could do or would accidentally do so, the egg 

 would not properly develop, as it is only the gall flower 

 which is suitable to the growth of the larva of the wasp. 

 But even if by chance such development would take place 

 the 3^oung wasp would quickly perish b}^ being enveloped 

 in the sugary liquid of the mature fig. A certainty is, 

 however, that I have never found any gall in the mature 

 Smyrna figs, which shows that no such development takes 

 place. 



What Does Not Take Place in C aerification, — Since 

 the most remote time, so many opinions have been ex- 

 pressed as regards the consequences of caprification, that 

 it may be proper to here point out what does not take 

 place. The old opinion that the gnawing of the wasp 

 relieves the fig of its superfluous juices, and thus causes 

 it to mature, is too absurd to be given much thought. 

 The gnawing done by the wasps is so infinitely small that 

 the fig, through the combined efforts of twenty wasps, 



