The Fig Tree. 163 



Aratian; the Chelidonian figs are the latest, and ripen against the 

 winter; some bear twice a year, and some of the Chalcidian kind 

 bear three times a year. ' The Romans had figs from Chalcis and 

 Chios, and many of their varieties, it appears, were named from 

 those who first introduced or cukivated them in Italy. The Liv- 

 ian fig was so named after Livia, wife to the emperor, Augustus, 

 who, it is said, made an unnatural use of it to poison her husband. 



The fig tree is a low shrub naturahzed in Italy and the south of 

 France, and enduring the open air in the mildest parts of Britain 

 and the United States. This tree, in France and Italy, grows as 

 large as our apple trees, but in England and this country seldom 

 exceeds two yards in height; the trunk is about the thickness of a 

 human arm; the wood is porous and spongy; the bark ash-colored; 

 the branches smooth with oblong white dots; the leaves annual 

 in the temperate zones, but perennial within the tropics, cordate, 

 ovate, three or five lobed, thick, and the size of the hand. The 

 fruit is a berry, turbinate, and hollow within; produced chiefly on 

 the upper part of the shoots of the former year, in the axils of the 

 leaves, on small, round peduncles. The flowers are produced 

 within the fruit; what is considered as the fruit being a common 

 calyx or receptacle; the male flowers are few, and inserted near 

 the opening in the extremity of the receptacle, or fruit; the fe- 

 male flowers are very numerous, and fill the rest of the hollow 

 space within. The greater part prove abortive, both with and 

 without the process of caprijication. The fig tree is distinguished 

 from all other trees, with which we are acquainted, by its bearing 

 two successive and distinct crops of fruit in the same year, each 

 crop being produced on a distinct set of shoots; but this climate 

 rarely allows the second crop to come to maturity, except where 

 they are forced by hot-house culture. 



The caprijication of figs was practised by the ancients in the 

 same manner as it is now attended to by the inhabitants of the 

 Archipelago; and it is described by Theophrastus, Plutarch, 

 Phny and other authors of antiquity. It is too curious a circum- 

 stance in the history of the fig tree to be omitted, as it furnishes 

 a convincing proof of the reality of the sexes of plants. In the 

 cultivated fig, the receptacles are found to contain only female 

 flowers, that are fecundated by means of a kind of gnat [culex L.) 

 bred in the fruit of the wild fig trees, which pierces that of the 

 cultivated, in order to deposit its eggs within, at the same time 

 diffusing within the receptacle the farina of the male flowers; 

 within this operation, the fruit may ripen, bat no effective seeds 

 are produced. Hence it is, that we can raise no fig trees from 

 the fruit of our gardens, having no wild figs to assist the seed. 



