FIG TREE. 
309 
to itself, will scarcely yield twenty-five pounds of 
ripe figs, may, by the assistance of these insects, be 
made to produce nearly ten times that quantity. 
It has been observed by M. Godeheu, that capri- 
fication, though the means of producing a large crop, 
is injurious to the trees, and prevents their yielding 
well on the following year. 
The heat of the sun is not sufficient to dry the 
figs produced by capri fication. They must be 
placed in the oven, which gives them a disagreeable 
taste; but is, nevertheless, very necessary to kill the 
cynips, which might otherwise produce their larvae 
and destroy the figs. 
Caprification, as described by antient authors, is 
precisely the same operation as is at present per- 
formed in the Archipelago. All agree in declaring 
that the wild fig tree, caprificus , never ripened its 
fruit, but was absolutely necessary for ripening that 
of the garden or domestic kind, over which the pea- 
sants suspended its branches. Linnaeus explains 
this operation, by supposing that the insects brought 
the farina from the wild fig which contained male 
flowers only, to the domestic fig, which contained 
the female ones : but Hasselquist, from what he saw 
in Palestine, seemed to doubt of this mode of fructi- 
fication, and M. Bernard has opposed the hypothesis 
decidedly. He could never find the insect in the 
cultivated fig ; and, in reality, it appeared to leave 
the wild fig, after the stamina were mature and their 
pollen dissipated ; besides, he adds, what they may 
have brought on their wings must be rubbed away 
