FIG. 267 
TRKECIA. 
279. The FIG is the pulpy fruit of a shrub, or low tree 
(Ficus carica, Fig. 83), which is a native of the South of 
Europe, and some parts of Asia. 
Fig-trees are branched from the bottom, and the leaves are 
large, smooth, and irregularly divided into from three to five 
deep and rounded lobes. The fruit grows on short and thick 
stalks, of purplish colour, and contains a soft, sweet, and fra- 
grant pulp, intermixed with numerous small seeds. 
It appears from history, both sacred and profane, 
that the fig-tree was an object of attention in the 
earliest times. This fruit was one of the most com- 
mon and favourite aliments of the ancient Greeks, and 
constituted a very valuable food with the peasants of 
some parts of Italy. Fig-trees are now much culti- 
vated in Turkey, Italy, and the Levant, as well as in 
Spain and some of the southern parts of France. All 
the islands of the Archipelago yield figs in abundance, 
but these are in general of very inferior quality. 
The trees are propagated either by suckers, by 
layers, or by cuttings ; and the process of increasing 
and ripening the fruit is an art which requires much 
attention. This, as it is practised in the Levant, is 
called caprification, and is performed by wounding the 
buds of the figs, with a straw or feather dipped in sweet 
oil at a certain period of their growth. 
Figs are dried either by a furnace or in the sun, 
after having been dipped in a scalding ley made of 
the ashes of the fig-tree. In this state they are used 
both in medicine, and as food ; and are considered 
more wholesome and more easy of digestion than when 
fresh. They form a considerable branch of commerce, 
and are exported, in boxes of different size and ^shape, 
to nearly all the northern parts of Europe. When we 
receive them, their surface is usually covered with a 
saccharine matter which has exuded from the fruit. A 
small and cheap kind of fig is imported in small frails 
or baskets from Faro. 
There are numerous varieties of the fig, but the 
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