TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION. 
31 
The letter referred to contained the interesting statement that the figs with 
the insects in them wrnre discovered by accident. One of Mr. Roeding’s men 
was engaged in gathering caprifigs and extracting the pollen for the purpose 
of artificially pollinating Smyrna figs by means of a blowpipe. He ran across 
one fig which apparently contained seeds, but which Mr. Roeding found were 
in reality galls. The fig was taken from the covered tree, and about the 24th 
of June all of the figs on the same tree had dropped and shriveled up, with 
the exception of about twenty, which were still green and plump, and which 
subsequent evidence showed contained developing Blastophagas. Another 
fig outside of the covered tree was found later in the same day, from which 
a winged Blastophaga was in the act of emerging. This fig was immediately 
tied on one of the Smyrna fig trees. A day later ten more figs on an outside 
tree were found to contain the Blastophaga. The penetrating power of the 
female Blastophaga was shown by an interesting experience of Mr. Roeding. 
On June 29 he picked half a dozen caprifigs and, placing them in a glass jar 
covered with cheese cloth, started for his foothill farm, where he has some 
caprifigs growing. On the journey about one hundred Blastophagas emerged, 
and were quite lively, flying around in the jar. On arrival he found upon 
examining the cheese cloth that at least a half dozen of the insects were forc- 
ing their way through the cloth, and some were crawling on the outside. 
On June 29 all the wild figs left under the tented tree and those on the out- 
side tree, with the exception of one, were picked and hung in other wild fig 
trees upon which young fruits, presumably mammoni, were beginning to 
develop. On the 30th of June a most interesting discovery was made. A 
tree 1,500 feet away from the tented tree was found bearing two caprifigs 
containing galls and male insects. 
About the middle of July Mr. Roeding found Smyrna figs which had been 
fertilized by the Blastophaga. By July 19 not only was the difference 
between these figs and the unfertilized Smyrna figs most striking, but the 
difference between them and those which had been artificially pollinated was 
also very marked. The unfertilized Smyrna fig is hollow, can easily be 
squeezed together by the fingers, and drops to the ground before it is more 
than three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The figs which Dr. Eisen and 
Mr. Roeding have been able to artificially fertilize by collecting pollen from the 
caprifigs and introducing it into the orifice of the Smyrna fig by means of a 
toothpick or blowpipe become rather firm, and on reaching maturity contain 
many ripe seeds, probably not more than half, however, of the number of 
♦ripe seeds that may be found in the average imported Smyrna fig. Those 
found by Mr. Roeding which had been pollinated by the Blastophagas, how- 
ever, were by the 19th of July more than twice as large as the unfertilized 
ones, were solid and firm, and literally packed with ripe seeds surrounded by 
tissue of a beautiful pink color. On the same date (July 19) caprifigs were 
found full of what seemed to be galls. Dissection, however, showed that all 
of the seed-like objects which were cut open were really seeds and not galls. 
The precise variety of caprifig in which this phenomenon was noticed is not 
known to Mr. Roeding. It contains male flowers, however, and is with little 
doubt a caprifig. The mammoni flowers, as is well known to investigators, 
occasionally develop a certain number of ripe seed. 
What the outcome will be from this time on is difficult to predict. The 
Blastophaga has been successfully introduced and has bred profusely for one 
generation. Whether it will breed in the mammoni caprifigs we can not 
tell as yet. It has not been found to do so in Europe, as previously stated. 
