Aug. io, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



*$7 



) The Inspectors remark with pleasure that the work- 



) men are very generally beginning to understand that 

 the regulations enforced are for their benefit and pro- 

 tection. Local authorities, however, too often exhibit a 

 lamentable amount of carelessness. 



Only two prosecutions for irregularities have taken 

 place. The secret and illegal manufacture of explosives 

 for criminal purposes is by no means at an end, nor will 

 it be until the local authorities are more vigilant, and 

 until the public, whose safety is at stake, call attention 

 to every suspicious circumstance they may observe. 

 Special precautions are required to guard magazines 

 against unlawful entry and abstraction of any portion of 

 their contents. We should beg to suggest, in addition, 

 the introduction of electric alarms, which would at once 

 indicate any entrance after business-hours. 



A source of danger to the public is the illegal con- 

 veyance of explosives under false names in railway- 

 carriages. One man was found to have left 5 lbs. of 

 dynamite on the rack of a carriage, labelled " Knives and 

 forks." He was fortunately detected and convicted. 

 Carts loaded with dynamite have been sent to mines 

 without even a cover, and with none of the other pre- 

 cautions which the Act enjoins. Perhaps the most 

 glaring case is one which occurred this year on the 

 Thames below London. A fleet of barges, the property 

 of a man who had contracted to convey live shell, gun- 

 powder, etc., for Government, was left moored for some 

 days without any men in charge. It is obvious that the 

 heaviest penalty which the Act enjoins falls sadly short 

 of the exigencies of such a case. 



THE FIG TRADE. 



THE ordinary edible fig, though in strictness a tropical 

 or at least sub-tropical fruit, is capable of cultiva- 

 tion over a very large part of the temperate zones. The 

 tree thrives in England and resists such winters as that 

 which has just come to a close, whilst many native 

 British plants have been destroyed in the same gardens. 

 It ripens its fruit in the open air, in a fair season, not 

 merely along our south coasts, but in south-western 

 Essex and in sheltered situations, even in the Midlands. 

 The fig tree has the great advantage that it is very rarely 

 molested by vermin. Cats do not sharpen their claws 

 against its trunk, but smell at it and turn away with an 

 air of disgust. As a matter of course, the tree flourishes 

 better and bears more luxuriantly in the south of France, 

 in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Northern Africa. It is still 

 better adapted to the climates of South Africa and 

 Australia, where Baron Miiller recommends it for cul- 

 tivation on account of jts power of resisting dry 

 weather. 



But whilst figs are thus produced over a very ex- 

 tensive part of the earth the dry fruit of commerce, the 

 " Eleme," is obtained exclusively from one locality in 

 Asia Minor, a slip of land in the fruitful valley of 

 the Maeander, perhaps sixty miles in length by eight 

 miles in breadth, beginning near the site of ancient 

 Ephesus. This valley produces annually about twenty- 

 five million pounds of figs, a great part of which are 

 exported. 



Of the many kinds of this fruit known to the horti- 

 culturist two only are cultivated on the large scale in the 

 Mseander valley. There is a short kind, plump and 

 pulpy, and of a deep purple colour approaching to black. 

 This kind is preferred for eating whilst fresh, and is 



hawked about in the East to the well-known cry, " In 

 the name of the prophet, figs ! " A larger greenish- 

 yellow kind is preferred for exportation, as it bears the 

 packing and carriage better. The fig season begins 

 about the end of August and finishes early in October. 

 The fruit is not plucked, but allowed to fall when fully 

 ripe. It is not injured by the fall, as the trees are not 

 high, and as the fruit, moreover, grows by preference on 

 the lower branches. But the figs when thus fallen 

 cannot be suffered to lie even a day upon the ground, as 

 they are then apt to turn mouldy and spoil. The whole 

 rural population, men, women, and children, turn out in 

 a body to collect the harvest in baskets. Layers of 

 rushes or flags are laid upon the ground in some 

 part of the gardens, fully open to the sun and not 

 shaded by trees, and upon these the figs are spread out 

 to dry. At first they touch each other but they soon 

 shrink so as to leave intervals. In five days they are 

 sufficiently dry for packing, and the sorting begins. The 

 finest alone were formerly known as "Eleme," which is 

 not the name of a place, but means chosen or selected, 

 just as the finest quality of gum Arabic is termed 

 " elect." Latterly the name has been given to all grades, 

 except the poorest, such as are often sold threaded upon 

 strings or rushes. Each grade is put separately into 

 coarse, porous sacks of goats' hair. These allow a very 

 free passage for the air, even if quite full, so that there 

 is no danger of the fruit becoming mouldy. Each 

 sack when full weighs about twoquintals — say 250 lbs. — 

 and in these they are conveyed upon camels to the 

 nearest station on the line to Smyrna. 



By one of those curious conventions which we en- 

 counter in nearly all countries and in all spheres of 

 human activity, each camel must carry two such sacks. 

 As camels differ among themselves in strength quite as 

 much as do other beasts of burden, it often happens that 

 one is overloaded whilst another could, without incon- 

 venience, carry half as much more. But no one departs 

 from the time-honoured routine. 



The fig market at Smyrna consists of two dirty streets, 

 in which the sacks are deposited on the ground so as 

 barely to leave room for the camels to pass between. 



To this market come Greek merchants, who act as 

 middlemen, and who generally secure a larger share of 

 the profit than falls to the lot of the cultivator. 



These Greeks most commonly sell the fruit to the 

 packers, and these in turn dispose of them to shippers. 

 Sometimes, indeed, the shippers buy at once from the 

 grower, who is represented by the devegee, the camel 

 driver who has conveyed the crop to market. The 

 devegees are always Turks, and as invariably honest, 

 which can scarcely be said of all the other persons en- 

 gaged in the traffic. 



Next comes the packing — perhaps the most interesting, 

 and certainly the least appetising, stage of the business. 

 The first step is a re-sorting, executed by women. Then 

 follows the " pulling." Each fruit is seized by a man 

 who dips his hand into a can of salt water, flattens the 

 fig between his fingers, gives it a peculiar pull which 

 causes it to split at the stalk end, and lays it neatly in 

 the box. For the cleanliness and the healthiness of these 

 men there is no guarantee. It would be well indeed if 

 these operations could be executed by machinery. The 

 salt water is said to bring out the sugar of the fruit to 

 the surface in about three months' time, and the fruit is 

 then in the best condition for use. The best kind are 

 mostly packed in bcxes, and the interrqediate qualities in 



