WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 447: CHAP. 44.—CAPRIFICATION, AND PARTICULARS CONNECTED WITH THE FIG.
By the Elder Pliny
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Classics of LiteratureHistory - AncientNature/Gardening/AnimalsScience - Biology

About This Book

The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 44.—CAPRIFICATION, AND PARTICULARS CONNECTED WITH THE FIG.

It is beyond all doubt that in caprification the green fruit gives birth to a kind of gnat;3240 for when they have taken flight, there are no seeds to be found within the fruit: from this it would appear that the seeds have been transformed into these gnats. Indeed, these insects are so eager to take their flight, that they mostly leave behind them either a leg or a part of a wing on their departure. There is another species of gnat,3241 too, that grows in the fig, which in its indolence and malignity strongly resembles the drone of the bee-hive, and shows itself a deadly enemy to the one that is of real utility; it is called centrina, and in killing the others it meets its own death.

Moths, too, attack the seeds of the fig: the best plan of getting rid of them, is to bury a slip of mastich,3242 turned upside down, in the same trench. The fig, too, is rendered extremely productive3243 by soaking red earth in amurca, and laying it, with some manure, upon the roots of the tree, just as it is beginning to throw out leaves. Among the wild figs, the black ones, and those which grow in rocky places, are the most esteemed, from the fact of the fruit containing the most seed. Caprification takes place most advantageously just after rain.