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ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the sugar*, and on an infusorium of the genus Anguillula, which 

 infested the cynips of the Wild Pig in the eatable varieties. I 

 touched also on the agents which, under given circumstances, are 

 capable of accelerating the ripening, distinguishing the natural 

 from the artificial. The natural agents are heat, light, water, 

 soil, with the functions which depend upon them, as exhalation, 

 respiration, and nutrition in general — in a word, those agents 

 which sustain life — according to the intensity with which they 

 operate, and the time during which their action lasts, influencing 

 or retarding the maturity, and making it more or less perfect. 



The Neapolitan cultivators, and those in other parts of Italy, 

 hasten artificially the ripening of the figs by the process called, 

 improperly, "puncturation," which consists in anointing the mouth 

 of the fig with a very small quantity of oil when it has arrived at a 

 certain size, when the flowers contained in it have become pink, 

 and the scales are a little raised. The maturation is advanced by 

 it about ten days. ~No one has found out how the olive-oil 

 operates in this case, as far as I am aware ; whilst on other parts 

 of the same tree, and especially on the leaves, it operates as a 

 poison. Twenty years ago, when treating on caprification, in dis- 

 tinguishing the effect of the cynips from that of the oil, I came 

 to this conclusion, " the oil operates on the fig in a manner 

 unknown to me ; placed on the mouth of the fruit, it contracts as 

 the oil gradually spreads, and the green colour changes. It 

 appeared to me that such a substance could not alter the latex, 

 but might impede the exhalation and the other functions of the 

 cuticle, as well with respect to the light as to the air, and that by 

 these means the anointed fig begins to ripen from the base, and 

 the taste is in consequence not so good as that of those which 



* Witli regard to the origin of the sugar, I stated that the principal source 

 of that substance is the starch in the parenchyma, not in the latex, as appears 

 at first sight, since the latex is found in the receptacles as well at perfect maturity 

 as in the same figs when dry. The new researches do not contradict this asser- 

 tion ; but sugar is found, in small quantities, in the latex of many plants, and 

 abounds in Urorfigma Saussuriamcm ; there is a little in that of the common fig, 

 as appears from Trommer's reagent. Sugar being soluble in water, the milk 

 which is mixed with it forms a deposit at the bottom of the cup, and the 

 liquid part, passed through a filter, and treated with the above reagent, after 

 being boiled a short fcirra, shows the presence of sugar, which exists in the 

 fluid part in the organic 'composition of the milk, not in the sediment, which 

 remains unaltered at perfect maturity. But that small proportion of sugar could 

 never represent the enormous quantity in the ripe fig. 



