Page:Enquiry into plants (Volume 1).pdf/189

Rh where there is most dust. And they say that hulwort also, when it fruits freely, and the 'gall-bags' of the elm are used for caprification. For certain little creatures are engendered in these also. When the knips is found in figs, it eats the gall-insects. It is to prevent this, it is said, that they nail up the crabs; for the knips then turns its attention to these. Such are the ways of assisting the fig-trees.

With dates it is helpful to bring the male to the female; for it is the male which causes the fruit to persist and ripen, and this process some call, by analogy, 'the use of the wild fruit.' The process is thus performed: when the male palm is in flower, they at once cut off the spathe on which the flower is, just as it is, and shake the bloom with the flower and the dust over the fruit of the female, and, if this is done to it, it retains the fruit and does not shed it. In the case both of the fig and of the date it appears that the 'male' renders aid to the 'female,'—for the fruit-bearing tree is called 'female'—but while in the latter case there is a union of the two sexes, in the former the result is brought about somewhat differently.

155