164 Observations on the Fruit of Fig Trees. 



of the leaf. After many years of such failure, and being 

 told by my friends, that the trees cast their fruit, because 

 the climate was not warm enough to bring it to perfection, 

 I began to investigate the cause myself, and my first conclu- 

 sion was, that most probably they did not cast their fruit 

 because the climate was not warm enough ; for they cast 

 them at the warmest part of summer, and particularly the 

 Figs, I always observed, came out very healthy of complexion, 

 and advanced rapidly to a certain size, at which they invari- 

 ably began to turn yellow, and soon after dropped. If they 

 had remained on the trees, and ripened imperfectly, or been 

 immature at the fall of the leaf, as the summer crop of the 

 White Marseilles kind, climate might have been blamed. 

 Conjecturing other causes of failure for the other trees, I 

 tried changes and experiments on the soil, and in their 

 treatment, but all in vain. 



Four or five years ago, I had a Fig-tree given to me by 

 Earl Grey, of a kind, which bears ripe fruit at Howick, 

 thirty miles north from hence. Lord Grey had received 

 the kind from the Earl of Lauderdale, who lived at Dun- 

 bar, in Haddingtonshire, and I believe it is that kind, which 

 is common in the gardens of that neighbourhood, bearing 

 plenty of ripe fruit in them. This tree began to bear in the 

 year 1819, and both then and this year brought spring Figs to 

 great perfection ; they are purple. Four or five years ago, 

 I took up the White Marseilles Fig-tree which stood against 

 my garden wall, and moved it into a conservatory, and placed 

 it against the back wall : after a year it began to bear, and 

 has ever since borne crops of very perfect summer Figs, 



