There are very many strange and inexplicable things in nature, and man is led by instinct or observation to do many acts which appear also to be strange and contradictory. This thought occurs upon reading Count Laubach's recent report upon fig culture at Naples. One of the most pressing duties of the farmer and fruit cultivator is to wage ceaseless war upon insects which infest and destroy the products of his fields. And yet we have afforded us in the cultivation of the fig a paradox which will surprise most of our readers. The wild fig, which grows plentifully in fig-growing countries, is uniformly perforated by an insect, which bores into the fruit and hatches out a brood of insects, which devour the fruit before they leave their home. It would appear not to,be a very desirable insect to have about a fig orchard, but such is not the fact, for the fig cultivators of Italy and Asia Minor go into the fields and gather the insect-infested wild figs, and hang them on the branches of the cultivated fruit, in order that the insect may enter it. Can anything be stranger than this? The fig-growers think that the entrance of the insects prevents the fruit from falling off the trees, hastens its maturity, and improves its taste.

This operation is called caprifica-tion (from caprificus, the Latin name of the wild fig), and the name of the insect tribe is the Blas-tophagas. Our farmers would call insect pests with such a name "blast your phizes," no doubt.

When the insect enters and lays its eggs in the wild fig it does so to winter and secure food for its young. When the eggs are laid in the wild fig they are hatched, and destroy the fruit; when in the cultivated, they are laid in the wrong place, and therefore the progeny never develop. But they do an important work, for they carry with them into the cultivated fig, which usually has only female flowers, the male pollen, and thus cause the formation of seeds. Those who have been consumers of the delicious fig in its dried state cannot fail to have observed that connected with the best fruit there is very often a worm-hole in the end of each specimen, and this is the work of the insect alluded to. - Journal of Chemistry.