Introduction Under Rusk and Morton


ments with many unsuccessful date introductions also helped pave
the way for this crop.
 THE SMYRNA FIG
 Transplanting a crop industry from one environment to
 another is often a long and exasperating task. Many of our crops
 have been developed because of the persistence of men who
 refused to be daunted by repeated failures. Typical of this work is
 the fascinating story behind the struggle to introduce the Smyrna
 fig into the United States.
 There are records of attempted introductions of figs as far back
 as colonial times. But our story begins in the latter part of the
 nineteenth century when government assistance to growers gave
 impetus to their efforts to adapt the fig to America.
 First Shipment From Smyrna-California was the center of
 experimental work because its climatic conditions most nearly
 matched those of the original environment of the figs. Attention
 centered around the Smyrna fig because growers felt it had the
 best commercial prospects. The first shipment of 448 cuttings
 from the ancient region of Smyrna (in the Maeander Valley on
 the west coast of Asia Minor) arrived in 1880. These were pro-
 cured through the American consul in Smyrna, E. J. Smithers,
 and brought to this country by G. P. Rixford of the San Francisco
 Bulletin. The next year, 14,000 more cuttings were distributed
 by the Bulletin with a fanfare of publicity. Praise from the
 growers quickly turned into blasts of criticism at the Bulletin
 when the young trees bore fruits that would not ripen and fell
 from the trees in shriveled bunches. The Bulletin retorted that
 the failure was due to chicanery by the natives of Smyrna who had
 slipped them worthless figs in order to deter competition. (1)
 For the next two decades growers continued to import seeds
and cuttings of the Smyrna fig, but in all cases the fruit refused
to ripen on the tree.
 Native gardeners of Smyrna followed the practice of suspend-
ing fruits of the wild caprifig from the branches of the Smyrna
fig trees during the fruiting season. This had the earmarks of
some old fertility rite to the scientific minds of American agri-
culturists, and they dismissed the practice as mere superstition.
 Role of Blastophaga-A study of the fig flower in 1885 by Dr.
Gustav Eisen, a Swedish scientist who had come to the United
States twelve years before, indicated that fertilization of the