PLANTS CULTIVATED FOE THEIR FEUITS. 295 



name olocoton for Nicaragua. Yet Correa de Mello and 

 Spruce, in their important article on the Papayaceee, after 

 having botanized extensively in the Amazon region, in 

 Pern and elsewhere, consider the papaw as a native of 

 the West Indies, and do not think it is anywhere wild 

 upon the Continent. I have seen^ specimens from the 

 mouth of the river Manatee in Florida, from Puebla in 

 Mexico, and from Columbia, but the labels had no remark 

 as to their wild character. The indications, it will be 

 noticed, are numerous for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico 

 and for the West Indies. The habitation in Brazil which 

 lies apart is very doubtful. 



Fig — 'Ficus carica, Linnaeus. 



The history of the fig presents a close analogy with 

 that of the olive in point of origin and geographical 

 limits. Its area as a wild species may have been extended 

 by the dispersal of -the seeds as cultivation spread. This 

 seems probable, as the seeds pass intact through the 

 digestive organs of men and animals. However, countries 

 may be cited where the fig has been cultivated for a 

 century at least, and where no such naturalization has 

 taken place. I am not speaking of Europe north of the 

 Alps, where the tree demands particular care and the 

 fruit ripens with difficulty, even the first crop, but of 

 India for instance, the Southern States of America, 

 Mauritius, and Chili, where, to judge from the silence of 

 compilers of floras, the instances of quasi-wildness are 

 rare. In our own day the fig tree grows wild, or nearly 

 wild, over a vast region of which Syria is about the 

 centre ; that is to say, from the east of Persia, or even 

 from Afghanistan, across the whole of the Mediterranean 

 region as far as the Canaries.^ From north to south this 

 zone varies in width from the 25th to the 40th or 42nd 

 parallel, according to local circumstances. As a rule, the 

 fig stops like the olive at the foot of the Caucasus and 

 the mountains of Europe which limit the Mediterranean 



' De Candolle, Prodr., xv. part 1, p. 414. 



* Boissier, FL Orient., iv. p. 1154; Brandis, Forest Flora of India, 

 p. 418 J Webb and Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Canaries, Botanique, iii. 

 p. 257. 



