Though indigenous to Western Asia, Figs have been cultivated in most countries from a remote period, and will ripen in England during a warm summer if screened from north-east winds. The fig tree flourishes best with [195] us on our sea coasts, bathed by the English Channel, by reason of the salt-laden atmosphere. Near Gosport, and at Fig Valleys, in the neighbourhood of Worthing, there are orchards of figtrees; but they remain barren in this country as far as affording seed to be raised anew from the ripened fruit. The first figtrees introduced into England are still alive and productive in the gardens of the Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth, having been planted there by Cardinal Pole in the time of Henry the Eighth. We call the Sunday before Easter "Fig Sunday," probably because of our Saviour's quest of the fruit when going from Bethany the next day. By the Jews a want of blossom on 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.