124 PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Smyrna figs for the purpose of determining one point that was of great 

 importance, and that was to ascertain the receptive stage of the Smyrna, 

 fig. I found that when the figs were about the size of a marble and 

 the flowers of a waxy white appearance, and the Smyrna fig of a shiny 

 green appearance outside, was the time it was in the receptive stage. I 

 also found that instead of one insect going into a fig, in almost every 

 instance there were from four to five insects in each fig. Another point 

 about which I was in doubt w^as to determine whether caprification was 

 only practiced once or a number of times, and how many caprified figs 

 it required to caprify a Smyrna fig tree. I found it was carried on 

 from two to three times in a season, when the caprifice crop was bear- 

 ing. On an average, in trees forty years old, not more than from 

 twelve to sixteen caprified figs were hung in the trees at any one time. 



Returning to Aidin, after making these investigations, the following 

 day, unfortunately for me an article which had appeared in the Saturday 

 Evening Post in the United States was copied into the Turkish and 

 Greek papers, and the gentleman at whose house I was stopping learned 

 through these papers who I was. Of course I had gone there really 

 under a misrepresentation, telling I was from New York and making 

 believe I knew nothing about the subject. Through my interpreter I 

 learned that this gentleman was very much worried, fearing that through 

 the information and assistance he had given me he might get into 

 trouble with his Government. After a few days he concluded to give 

 me all the information necessary, but after that time I traveled under 

 an assumed name. 



The extent of this fig district will probably be of interest to you. The 

 orchards commence about 48 miles from Smyrna at a place called 

 lencaliz, and extend up as far as Densley. The extent of the fig dis- 

 trict is about 106 miles, and the fruit is grown entirely in the Meander 

 Valley. The district is about three fourths of a mile wide, along the 

 lower foothills, and you only find the figs growing around these hills 

 and none at all in the valley itself. 



The methods of cultivation are very crude indeed, the people simply 

 doing as their ancestors did. The trees as a rule are thirty to forty 

 years old. Wherever a tree has died they re- plant with young trees, 

 and their trees are never pruned. After the freeze of 1898 nothing was 

 done with the trees, and you can see the dead wood sticking out through 

 them all over the country. Another thing, instead of training the trees 

 so as to prevent sunburn, they are allowed to branch from six to seven 

 feet from the ground, and instead of one stem, they have seven or eight 

 stems. I asked a gentleman why this was, and he said, "That is the 

 way my father did it, and that is why I do it." 



Another very interesting thing is to see the manner in which caprified 

 figs are sold on the market. The caprified figs are, as a rule, found 



