Note 1023 — Chapter XVIII · THE SUCCESSION TO THE KINGDOM IN ANCIENT LATIUM

A. Engler, in V. Hehn’s Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, 7th Ed., (Berlin, 1902), p. 99. Compare Graf zu Solms-Laubach, op. cit.; Encyclopaedia Biblica, s.v. “Fig-tree,” vol. iv. 1519. The ancients were well aware of the production of these insects in the wild fig-tree and their transference to the cultivated fig-tree. Sometimes instead of fertilising the trees by hand they contented themselves with planting wild fig-trees near cultivated fig-trees, so that the fertilisation was effected by the wind, which blew the insects from the male to the female trees. See Aristotle, l.c.; Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, ii. 9; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xv. 79-81; Palladius, iv. 10. 28. On subject of the fertilisation of the fig the late Professor H. Marshall Ward of Cambridge kindly furnished me with the following note, which will serve to supplement and correct the brief account in the text:—“The fig is a hollow case full of flowers. In the wild fig a small gall wasp (Cynips psenes) lays its eggs: this kind of fig is still called Caprificus. The eggs hatch in the female flowers at the base of the hollow fig: at the top, near the ostiole observable on any ripe fig, are the male flowers. When the eggs hatch, and the little insects creep through the ostiole, the male flowers dust the wasp with pollen, and the insect flies to another flower (to lay its eggs), and so fertilises many of the female flowers in return for the nursery afforded its eggs. Now, the cultivated fig is apt to be barren of male flowers. Hence the hanging of branches bearing wild figs enables the escaping wasps to do the trick. The ancients knew the fact that the propinquity of the Caprificus helped the fertility of the cultivated fig, but, of course, they did not know the details of the process. The further complexities are, chiefly, that the fig bears two kinds of female flowers: one especially fitted for the wasp’s convenience, the other not. The Caprificus figs are inedible. In Naples three crops of them are borne every year, viz. Mamme (in April), Profichi (in June), and Mammoni (in August). It is the June crop that bears most male flowers and is most useful.” The suggestion that the festival of the seventh of July was connected with this horticultural operation is due to L. Preller (Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., i. 287).