OF FOREST-TREES. 149 



and fastened to it again in the same posture, bound and covered with CHAP. Vll. 

 the former plaster, withered in three days' time. Among other easy "^^"V^^ 

 remedies, a cerecloth of fresh butter and honey, applied whilst the wound 

 is green, especially in summer, and bound about with a thumb-rope 

 of moist hay, and rubbed with cow-dung, has healed many : but for 

 rare and more tender trees, after pruning, take purely refined tallow, 



deduce some singular experiments from many more plants^ to corroborate this doctrine 

 of the generation of plants, I shall not speak of the Maize, the generation of which 

 is denied by Siegesbeck and others, from the situation of the antherae and pistilla ; but refer 

 for this to a treatise written by Mr. Logan, of Philadelphia, entitled, " Experiments 

 concerning the Generation of Plants." Concerning the Hasel, see the Experiments 

 of Mr. Bradley, late Professor of Botany in Cambridge. As to the Fig-tree, we shall 

 explain its peculiar manner of generation, which is called Caprification, more at large. — 

 Tournefort, while he was in the islands of the Archipelago, accurately observed this, and 

 has described it in the following manner. " There are three varieties of the Caprijicus, 

 or Wild Fig, which is the male, called by the natives Foniiles, Cratirites, and Orni. These 

 produce their fruit at three different times of the year ; the fruit of the Fornites, or first 

 variety, begin to bud in August, and hold to the end of November, at which time, many 

 small insects make their escape from them, and lay their eggs on the Cratiriles, or second 

 variety, whose fruit is now coming out. The Cratirites, or second variety, bud in the end 

 of September, and hold till May following. The insects sometimes come out of these be- 

 fore the Orni, or third variety, are budded ; in which case, the husbandmen carefully seek 

 for those trees of the Cratirites whose insects have not yet come out, and tie their branches 

 on the Orni, that the insects may lay their eggs thereon. The Orni, or third variety, bud 

 in May, and are ripe in July. In all the three varieties, certain insects are generated, 

 which deposit their eggs, and these eggs become worms, and afterwards are turned into 

 flies before the fruit falls off. The countrymen chiefly gather the Orni in June and July, 

 a little before the dog-days, or when the insects begin to fly, and tie them with threads 

 to the cultivated Fig-tree ; then the insects by wounding the orifices of the cultivated Figs, 

 make their way into the cavities of the fruit, which ripen after this in about fourteen days." 

 This we shall now explain. The Caprijicus, or Wild Fig, is the male plant, and the 

 cultivated Fig, the female. The flowers are disposed within the cavity of the receptacle, 

 which is so close shut, that often it will scarce admit the end of a common needle through 

 the pore in its extremity. Now the fig-flies, which are of the ichneumon kind, being 

 transformed, and furnislied with wings, about the time the farina of the male Fig is ripe, 

 make their escape from those male Figs, and being wholly covered with their dust, after 

 copulation, they seek for a place to lay their eggs, and flying to every one of the female 

 Figs, they enter their cavities, which are filled with pistilla from all sides, by which means 

 they must necessarily brush off that farina, or male dust, with which they were covered, 

 and thus the seeds are impregnated. It is true, the female Fig can ripen its fruit, though 

 the seeds are not impregnated, because this fruit is not a pericarpium, or seed-vessel, but 

 ' Volume II. U 



