312 plint's natural histobt. [BookXY. 
produces a kind of gnat.'^ These insects, deprived of all sus- 
tenance from their parent tree, at the moment that it is has- 
tening to rottenness and decay, wing their flight to others of 
kindred though cultivated kind. There feeding with avidity 
upon the fig, they penetrate it in numerous places, and by 
thus making their way to the inside, open the pores of the' 
fruit.^^ The moment they eifect their entrance, the heat of 
the sun finds admission too, and through the inlets thus made 
the fecundating air is introduced. These insects speedily 
consume the tnilky juice that constitutes the chief support 
of the fruit in its infant®^ state, a result which would other- 
wise be spontaneously effected by absorption : and hence it is 
that in the plantations of figs a wild fig is usually allowed to 
grow, being placed to the windward of the other trees in 
order that the breezes may bear from it upon them. Improving 
upon this discovery, branches of the wild fig are sometimes 
brought from a distance, and bundles tied together are placed 
upon the cultivated tree. This method, however, is not neces- 
sary when the trees are growing on a thin soil, or on a site 
exposed to the north-east wind ; for in these cases the figs will 
dry spontaneously, and the clefts which are made in the fruit 
effect the same ripening process which in other instances is 
brought about by the agency of these insects. !N'or is it requisite 
to adopt this plan on spots which are liable to dust, such, for 
instance, as is generally the case with fig-trees planted by the 
side of much-frequented roads : the dust having the property 
of drying up^^ the juices of the fig, and so absorbing the 
milky humours. There is this superiority, however, in an ad- 
vantageous site over the methods of ripening by the agency of 
dust or by caprification, that the fruit is not so apt to fall ; for 
the secretion of the juices being thus prevented, the fig is not 
so heavy as it would otherwise be, and the branches are less 
brittle. 
All figs are soft to the touch, and when ripe contain grains^^ 
^3 This insect is one of the Hymenoptera ; the Cynips Psenes of Linnseus 
and Fabricius. There is another insect of the same genus, but not so 
well known. 
F^e observes that the caprification accelerates the ripeness of the 
fruit, but at the expense of the flavour. For the same purpose the upper 
part of the fig is often pricked with a pointed quill. 
»i Infantiam pomi " — literally, *'the infancy of the fruit." 
^2 Fee denies the truth of this assertion. ^ Frumenta. 
