liiTBODUCTIO^r.
sexual «lationslup had indosd prevailed even from the time of Arisfofle, and on this
. d c a w a s f o n n d e d t h e practice of caprification. Linn.ns indeed, in his //„te Clifor-
Uan„, boldly declared that the Capritig and Fig w e merely male and female of the
srnne speoes. Lrnn«ns W that the Caprifi. ™ practically a .nale, for he says tie
male P.g (Caprrfig) rs formed of male florets and of female florets, and of those the
females are sterile, the female ,Kg) is composed of female florets only. Bat botanists
sabseqnent to Lrnn«ns regarded the CapriBg and Fig as distinct species. This was
M . q n e l s , ™ . even in his latest rearrangement of the genus; and Sasparrini, as we
have seen, formed Oa^rijicus and each into a monospecifle genns. Another favourite
oprmon has also been that the two forms are races of one plant, the Caprifl. beinn- the
wJd race and the Pig the race which has been produced by cultivation. Tlds wa", the
view which Count Solms-Laubaeh maintained and defended with much skiH in a paner
published so lately as 1883.. The chief support of this view is really the faet that
amongst the gall flowers of the Caprifig there are occasionally developed perfect female
flowers whrch become fertilised and yield seed. Thus Gfasparrini states that, by carefullv
exammmg the contents of forty receptacles of Caprifig, he succeeded in obtainin.. from
them twenty perfect embryo-containing achenes. The ™w which Count Sohns-Lanbach
at firs adhered to was combated by Frit. Mailer, who maintained the opinion of Linn»us
that the two are but the male and female plants of one and the same species So
impres-sed was Solms-Laubaeh by lluher's ai^uments, that he undertook a jom-ney to Java
m order to be able to examine the fresh receptacles of other species with the view of
drscovenug what the disposition of the flowers in these might be. The results he found
to be confii-matory of Mailer's theory and contradictory of his own, and, with a mao-uanimous
candom- wMch is unfortunately too micommon, he publicly abjured his own theory
and adopted that of his critic. It was dm-ing tin. investigation tirat Count Solms-
Laubach discovered the true nature of the gall flowers.
P. Carica is not an Indo-Malayan species, but I have referred to it at such length
not only on account of the interest that attends the final settlement of a long-pending
controversy, but because tins species illustrates in an extreme fom the arrm^-ements
winch obtain in a large proportion of the speeies of the genus. Count Solms-Lauhal went
to Java expecting that the dimorphism in the receptacles respectively containing tire male
and female flowers which obtains in ft» Carica would be found to be eharaeteristic of
other speeies, and, all ttooagh his interesting and remarkable paper in Bolunisch Z,,iuMj
to which I have already referred, the influence of this expectation is traceable. As a
matter of fact, however, dimorphism in the male and female receptacles is the exception
and in hardly any other case is it so strongly marked as in Carim,
! ) , „ „ , „ i nrh'Atu,, i„ r,i,,„ta„, (Fim, c.ri„ L) ToTg,.!™
IKTKODUCTION.
In the majority of the gall flowers an insect dci)osits an egg, and many of them
contain a pupa, which is easily seen through the coats of the false achcne. The imago
escapes into the cavity of the receptacic by ciitting its way through those coats, and the
fully developed winged insects are often to be found in considerable numbers in the cavity
of the fig, the opening by which each escaped from the ovary in •n-hich it was developed
being clearly visible. In many species the perfect insects escape from the cavity of
the receptacle into the open air by a passage perforated by the males through the scales
that close the mouth of the latter. The egg of the insect must in many cases be deposited
in the ovary of the gall flower at a very early period; for about the time at which the
pupa is escaping from the ovary, the pollen of the anthers of the male flowers is only beginning
to be shod. It is evident therefore that the synchronism of the two events—the
escape of the insect and the maturity of the pollen—is an an-angemcnt of much physiological
significance. In the species of Ficus in which the arrangement just described obtains
(and these are by far the majority), the perfect female flowers arc contained in reccptacles
which ai'e consecrated to themselves alone. In these receptacles the flowers are all
perfect females. There is not a trace of a male or of a gall flower. These receptacles,
in many species, are perfectly closed from a very early stage, and yet in the majority of
cases every one of the ovaries of the females they enclose contains, when mature,
a perfect embryo. The exact way in wliich these females are pollenised is a matter on
which I cannot pretend to throw any liglit. can only state the problem. The males
are shut up from an eaa'ly age with a nimiber of females, the stractui'e of whose organs
is unfavourable to pollenisation. No pollen is produced by the males that ai-e shut iip -with
these females until all possibility of their becoming fertile with pollen has been precluded
by the deposit within each of theii- ovai-ial cavities of the egg of an insect. On the other
hand, a number of perfectly formed females, aH xocU adapted fur the reception of are
shut up together in a receptacle which contains neither male nor gall flowers, and to which
it is from a very early stage apparently impossible for insects bearing pollen to get access.
Yet each of the females situated in such apparently disadvantageous cii-cumstances bears
a well-formed embryo. No doubt the inscct developed in the gall flowers in some
way conveys the pollen of the males to the perfect females imprisoned in the neighboui--
ing receptacles. But although one can understand that it is to the ad^'antage of the
inscct to enter the rcccptacle containing the gall flowers, since these afford it such a
suitable nidus for its egg, and that the mature insect in escaping from these receptacles may
inadvei-tently carry along with it some of the pollen which the anthers are then shedding,
yet it is diilicult to understand how the pollen so removed is conveyed into the interior
of the receptacle containing the perfect ftjmales, and how these females arc so universally
fertilised by it.
This arrangement, by which the receptaclcs are practically dicccious, obtains, as I
have said, in a large propoition of the specios of Ficm. There is, however, a gi-^up of