Introduction Under Rusk and Morton


which was the last of the three generations of Blastophaga pro-
duced each year.
 In the spring, the wingless males of the first generation awaken
 from hibernation in the caprifig. They gnaw into the tiny galls or
 blisters in the fig to fertilize the imprisoned females. The male
 then dies and the female frees herself from her winter home and
 flies to the first fig crop of the year, the profichi. She saws her way
 into the fig orifice with her strong mandibles and sheds her wings
 at the same time. Inside the caprifig she deposits her eggs in the
 gall flowers and dies in her turn. From these eggs new females
 hatch out and in turn seek new fig homes for their eggs.
 From the caprifig male flowers the wasp brings the pollen that
 fertilizes the female flowers of the young Smyrna figs-if by mis-
 take she should happen to enter a Smyrna fig. And the successful
 cultivation of the Smyrna fig depends on the female wasp con-
 fusing the orifice of the Smyrna fig for that of the caprifig, her
 natural home. Once inside the Smyrna fig she finds the flowers
 so formed that she cannot deposit eggs with her ovipositor which
 nature had adapted to the caprifig flowers. In her frantic search,
 she thoroughly pollenizes the young Smyrna fig but dies with
 her own mission unaccomplished. Female wasps from succeeding
 generations of caprifigs keep the young Smyrnas fertilized through-
 out the season until the wasp again hibernates in the last caprifig
 crop of the year.
 Once the wasps' life cycle was understood, the wasps were
successfully introduced, and the fig industry flourished rapidly.
Caprifigs are still suspended from the branches of the Smyrna
trees in the Mediterranean area, but in America the College of
Agriculture of the University of California succeeded in 1948
in producing Smyrna figs using four synthetic hormones instead
of the caprifigs. Approximately 14,500 acres of Smyrna figs are
now under cultivation, and the industry markets figs valued at
several million dollars annually.
 While the Smyrna fig came to be of the greatest commercial
value to growers, a number of other fig varieties were also dis-
tributed for trial in the southern states at the close of the nine-
teenth century.
 THE DIVISION OF POMOLOGY
 A special agency to care for the interest of fruit growers-the
Division of Pomology-was established in 1886. Growers had