PROCEEDINGS OF TWEJ^TY-SlXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 125 



growing throughout the towns, and they are picked by the peasants and 

 carried to the markets early in the morning, and by seven o'clock the 

 buyers come and will pass from one basket to another and determine 

 which they want, and for which they will pay the highest price. The 

 price depends entirely upon the number of insects the fig shows — the 

 most insects bringing the highest price. 



I started to look up the varieties of the caprified fig^, but I gave it up. 

 There are almost as many varieties as there are trees. To show you 

 how these caprified figs are valued and what they think of caprification 

 in Smyrna, I learned that in 1898 they had a terrible frost and all the 

 trees were practically frozen. In order to get some for the Smyrna 

 figs, they sent to the island of Keos and paid as high as $80 to $100 

 a ton for them, when the ordinary price is about 2 cents a pound. 

 Another thing that puzzled me is that there is no irrigation practiced 

 there. The average rainfall is from 20 to 25 inches, and the only 

 irrigation is for the vegetable gardens. 



A MEMBER. What time of the year is the rainy season? 



MR. ROEDING. From October until May. I left Smyrna in the 



latter part of June and returned in August for the purpose of investi- 

 gating the methods of drying and of packing. I found that the method 

 of drying was very crude indeed; it was very simple, with very little 

 expense attached to it. The figs were allowed to drop, and were also 

 shaken and knocked off the trees. The picking takes place, as a rule, 

 early in the morning, and after they have got the figs off the ground, 

 they shake the trees and pick them off, and knock off those that are 

 sufficiently dried, and then the fruit is taken to a kind of a shanty and 

 spread on a mat. No attention is paid as to whether the figs touch each 

 other or not, or whether they are upside-down or any other way. That 



/naakes no difference at all to them. The time of drying is from two to 

 three days. The only figs that are turned are the large figs. They take 



- their hands and shovel them up in almost any way to get them turned 

 over. They are then put in piles until they are ready to be taken to 

 the market, where they are placed in sacks and taken to the nearest 

 railroad station. Trains leave these stations daily. There is no class 

 of fruit handled with greater rapidity than the fig. The day I went 

 from Aidin to Smyrna during the fig season over a dozen tons of figs 

 came into Smyrna that night. To give you an idea of the magnitude of 

 the business, I will say that this season the product will be from 25,000 

 to 30,000 tons, and that there will be about 30,000 people employed 

 there during the fig season. 



DR. SHERMAN. How do they pack them? 



MR. ROEDING. The first part of the packing comes in the sorting 

 of the figs, which is done by women. The figs are dumped into big 



