398 G. King — New Species of Ficus from New Guinea. [No. 4, 



In by far the majority of cases these two kinds of receptacles, so physi- 

 ologically distinct, are undistinguishable by external characters, and 

 they are both borne by the same individual plant. They look exactly 

 alike until one cuts them open and examines their contents. The most 

 notorious of the few exceptions to this rule is the common eatable fig 

 (Ficus Carica), in which species the male and gall flowers occupy elon- 

 gated receptacles borne on one set of individual trees, while the fertile 

 female flowers occupy more or less globular receptacles which are borne 

 by a different set of trees. So different in appearance are the two kinds 

 of receptacles in F. Carica, that the trees bearing them (although they 

 have similar leaves) have almost from time immemorial been considered 

 distinct species, known by distinct names — the former being called the 

 Caprifig, the latter the Fig. 



" In the majority of the gall flowers an insect deposits an egg, and 

 many of them contain a larva which is easily seen through the coats 

 of the false achene. The larva escapes into the cavity of the receptacle 

 by cutting its way through those coats, and the fully developed winged 

 insects are often to be found in considerable numbers in the cavity of 

 the fig, the opening by which each escaped from the ovary in which it 

 was developed being clearly visible. The perfect insects escape from 

 the cavity of the receptacle into the open air by perforating a passage 

 through the scales that close the mouth of the latter. The egg of the 

 insect must in most cases be deposited in the ovary of the gall flower at 

 a very early period ; for, about the time at which the pupa is escaping 

 from the ovary, the pollen of the anthers of the male flowers is only 

 beginning to be shed. It is quite clear therefore that the synchronism 

 of the two events — the escape of the insect and the maturity of the 

 pollen — is an arrangement of much physiological significance. In the 

 species of Ficus in which the arrangement just described obtains (and 

 these are by far the majority), the perfect female flowers are contained 

 in receptacles which are consecrated to themselves alone. In these 

 receptacles the flowers are all perfect females. There is not a trace of 

 a male or of a gall flower. These receptacles in many species are per- 

 fectly closed from a very early stage, and yet, in the majority of cases, 

 every one of the ovaries of the females they enclose contains, when 

 mature, a perfect embryo. The exact way in which these females are 

 pollenised is a matter on which I cannot pretend to throw any light. 

 I can only state the problem. The males are shut up from an early age 

 with a number of females, the structure of whose organs is unfavour- 

 able to pollenisation. No pollen is produced by the males that are shut 

 up with these females until all possibility of their becoming fertile 

 with pollen has been precluded by the deposit within each of their 



