the Fig tree was considered a
grievous calamity. On the Saturday preceding Palm Sunday (says
Miss Baker), the market at Northampton is abundantly supplied
with figs, and more of the fruit is purchased at this time than
throughout the rest of the year. Even charity children are regaled in
some parts with figs on the said Sunday; whilst in Lancashire fig
pies made of dried figs with sugar and treacle are eaten beforehand
in Lent.

In order to become fertilised, figs (of which the sexual apparatus lies
within the fruit) must have their outer skin perforated by certain
gnats of the Cynips tribe, which then penetrate to the interior whilst
carrying with them the fertilising pollen; but these gnats are not
found in this country. Producers of the fruit abroad bearing the said
fact in view tie some of the wild fruit when tenanted by the Culex
fly to the young cultivated figs.

Foreign figs are dried in the oven so as to destroy the larvae of the
Cynips insect, and are then compressed into small boxes. They
consist in this state almost exclusively of mucilage and sugar.

[196] Only one kind of Fig comes to ripeness with us in England,
the great blue Fig, as large as a Catherine pear. "It should be
grown," says Gerard, "under a hot wall, and eaten when newly
gathered, with bread, pepper, and salt; or it is excellent in tarts."
This fruit is soft, easily digested, and corrective of strumous
disease. Dried Turkey Figs, as imported, contain glucose (sugar),
starch, fat, pectose, gum, albumen, mineral matter, collulose, and
water. They are used by our druggists as an ingredient in confection
of senna for a gentle laxative effect. When split open, and applied
as hot as they can be borne against gumboils, and similar suppurative
gatherings, they afford ease, and promote maturation of the abscess;
and likewise they will help raw, unhealthy sores to heal. The first
poultice of Figs on record is that employed by King Hezekiah 260
years before Christ, at the instance of the prophet Isaiah, who
ordered to "take a lump of Figs; and they took it, and laid it on the
boil, and the King recovered" (2 Kings xx. 7).

The Fig is said to have been the first fruit, eaten as food by man.
Among the Greeks it formed part of the ordinary Spartan fare, and
the Athenians forbade exportation of the best Figs, which were
highly valued at table. Informers against those who offended in this
respect were called _Suko phantai_, or Fig discoverers--our
_Sy