16 BULLETIN 732, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Gasparrini (17) found 20 seeds in 40 mammoni figs and reached 
the conclusion that not more than one flower in 2,000 is a perfect 
female flower, all the others being gall sax incapable of fertili- 
zation. ‘The writer has found as many as 75 fertile seeds in one fig, 
and from a large number of mammoni Bee plants have grown at 
the United States Plant Introduction Garden, Chico, Cal. From 
careful observations he has been forced to the conclusion that all 
gall flowers are perfect female flowers and susceptible of pollination 
and that most of them are pollinated, but if the Blastophaga deposits 
an egg in the ovary the resulting larva prevents the development 
of the ovule and no seed is formed. The seeds therefore found in 
the mammoni figs are from those flowers in which the insect failed 
to oviposit. | 
SEEDS ACCOMPANIED BY SECRETION OF SUGAR. 
There seems to be some connection, not yet well understood, be- 
tween the seed and the secretion of sugar and colormg matter. The 
pedicels and floral envelopes of the seeds in mammoni figs are succu- 
lent, sweet, and generally of a pink color, while all parts of the gall 
flowers containing Blastophaga are white and quite dry, the difference 
in appearance being so marked that the seeds can readily be picked 
out with a pair of forceps from the mass of galls by their succulence 
and pinkish color. 
CAPRIFICATION. 
The term caprification is derived from the word capri, the name 
_ by which the male or pollen-bearing fig is known, and is applied to 
the process of hanging the caprifigs in the Smyrna trees. The details 
of the process are somewhat obscure and complicated, and it is not 
strange that it is little understood by the public in general, though 
known to the inhabitants of Asia Minor more than two thousand 
years ago. Theophrastus, who wrote about 350 years before Christ, 
describes the process as pr: acticed at that time exactly as it is nara 
at the present day in this country. 
Undoubtedly the cultivated fig was originally a dicecious species 
having about equal numbers of male and female trees. Through cen- 
turies of culture, varieties of the female figs have been developed which 
will produce fruit without caprification, but such figs never produce 
fertile seeds. Figs of the Smyrna type absolutely require fertiliza- 
tion to set fruit at all, and such fruits produce an abundance of fertile 
seeds, which undoubtedly add to the flavor and quality of the dried 
Smyrna figs. In orchard practice it is not necessary to have, as in 
the state of nature, approximately one half of the trees male and 
the other half female. One or two caprifig trees per acre of fig orch- 
ard is sufficient to supply an abundance of caprifigs to fertilize the 
whole orchard. 
