pillars of porphry, sent from Constantinople by the above mentioned emperor, whose picture we likewise met with amongst the other paintings. As old as this church is, it is kept in such good repair, and looks so fresh, that one would hardly take it for an ancient structure, were it not for the taste in which it was built. They tell us of many miracles wrought in this church, and showed us several relics which they preserve with great care and veneration, particularly a piece of the true cross, and a thumb of St. John the Baptist.

As for the island of Scio in general, it is rugged and mountainous, nor are the mountains covered with wood, as they were formerly, but naked and unpleasant; in some places, however, there are abundance of orange, citron, olive, mulberry, pomegranate, and myrtle-trees, not to mention those which afford mastich and turpentine. The country produces some corn, but not enough for the use of the inhabitants, so that they are obliged to supply their wants from the coast of Natolia; and for this reason the Christians cannot long maintain this island, or perhaps any other in the Archipelago, against the Turks, unless they are complete masters of Candia or the Morea, from whence they may furnish it with provisions; for if the Turks prohibit corn being imported into the islands, they must soon submit or starve; and by this means Sultan Bajazet reduced many of them, as Cantacuzenus reports.

But if Ceres had not been very kind to the Scions, Bacchus, or his son Oenopion at least, has in some measure made them amends, for they have such plenty of excellent wine, as to export some of it to the neighboring islands. It is said that Oenopion first taught the Scions the culture of the vine, and that the first red wine was made in this country. Virgil and Horace* knew very

* Horace makes frequent mention of the wine of this island, both in his odes and satires and Virgil takes notice of it in one of his eclogues :

Vina novum fundam calathis Arvisia nectar. Ecel. V. 71.

Two goblets will I crown with sparkling wine,

The gen'rous vintage of the Chian vine;

These will I pour to thee, and make the nectar thine.--Dryden.

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well the goodness of the wines of Scio, and Strabo speaks of them as the best in Greece, especially those of that part of the island called Ariusia, whence the Vina Ariusia or Arvisia of the Latin writers. Pliny often mentions this admirable liquor, and quotes Varro to prove that the wine of Scio was prescribed at Rome as a stomachic. Athenæus is more particular as to its nature and qualities, and says that it helps digestion, makes those who drink it grow fat, and exceeds all other wines in its delicious flavor. In short, what vogue it was in appears from hence, that Cæsar regaled his friends with it in his triumphs and sacrifices to Jupiter and the other deities.

In Scio they plant their vines on the hills, and cut their grapes in August, letting them dry in the sun for seven or eight days after they are gathered, and having pressed them, they set the liquor to ferment in tubs in a warm close cellar. The vineyards in greatest repute are those of Mesta, a village in that part of the country called Ariusia by Strabo, as mentioned above, from whence the ancients had their nectar: and to this day the inhabitants have a wine they call by the same name, but the grapes it is made of, have a styptic quality, which gives it such a roughness as makes it difficult to swallow. When they make their best wine, they mix their black grapes with some white ones, which smell like the kernel of a peach.

They have several plantations of olives in Scio, but their best crops do not produce above two hundred hogsheads of oil. They make annually about thirty thousand weight of silk, great part of which is used in the island, in the manufacture of velvet, damask, and rich stuffs, which they export to Asia, Egypt, and Barbary. Every pound of silk is subject to a duty of four timins, that is, twenty pence, at the custom house, which is paid by the buyer. The duties laid on the several commodities of the island are farmed at twenty five thousand crowns, payable to the chief treasurer of Constantinople.

Wool, cheese, and figs, are considerable articles in the traffic of Scio, especially the last; for besides what they use in making brandy, they export great quantities of them to the adjacent

islands. These figs they cultivate and ripen, as they do in many other islands of the Archipelago, by a peculiar art, which the ancients called caprification; but they are far inferior in goodness to the figs of Italy, Spain, and Provence, being preserved in ovens, the heat whereof deprives them of their delicious taste Some modern naturalists have looked upon the art of caprification as a mere chimera, but M. Tournefort has put the matter out of doubt, by giving us the whole process of it, as he learned it in the island of Zia, where it is practised; and I find that gentleman's observations perfectly correspond with those we made at Scio, relating to the same affair, and with the information we received from a native of that island, who had been many years employed in this extraordinary sort of culture; of which the following account cannot fail of being very acceptable to the curious.

In order to understand rightly this husbandry of figs, we are to observe, that in most of the islands of the Archipelago they have two sorts of fig-trees to manage; the first called Ornos, from the old Greek Erinos, a wild fig tree, in Latin Caprificus*; the second the domestic or garden fig tree. The wild sort bears three kinds of fruit,† Fornites, Cratitires, and Orni, of absolute necessity towards ripening the garden fig. The Fornites appear in August, and hold to November without ripening, wherein breed small worms, which turn to a sort of gnats, no where to be seen but about these trees. In October and November these gnats make a puncture into the second fruit, called Cratitires, which do not shew themselves till towards the end of September; and the Fornites gradually fall off after the gnats have left them. The Cratitires remain on the tree till May, and inclose the eggs deposited in them by the Fornites when they made the aforesaid puncture. In May the third sort of fruit, called Orni, the big

*Caprificus vocatur e sylvestri genere ficus nunquam matureseens, sed quod ipsa non habet aliis tribuens. Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. XV. сар. 19.

†Caprifici triferæ sunt. Primo fœtu sequens evocatur, sequenti tertius: hoc fici caprificantur. Plin. Lib. XVI. cap. 27.

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gest of them all, begins to appear, which, after it is grown to a certain size, and its bud begins to open, is pricked in that part by the gnats issuing from the Cratitires.

It sometimes happens that the gnats of the Cratitires do not come forth so soon as the Orni of the very same tree are disposed to receive them, in which case the husbandman is obliged to bring some Cratitires from another tree, and fix them at the ends of the branches of that fig tree whose Orni are in a fit disposiion to be pricked by the gnats: If this be neglected, the Orni fall, and the gnats of the Cratitires afterwards fly away. We may naturally suppose it requires a thorough acquaintance with this sort of culture, to know the critical juncture when such assistance is necessary; and in order to this, the bud of the fig must be observed with the greatest attention, for that part not only indicates the time that the prickers are to issue forth, but also when the fig is to be pricked successfully. If the bud be too hard and compact, the gnat cannot lay its eggs; and the fig drops when the bud is too much expanded.

None of these sorts of fruit are good to eat, and are only serviceable in ripening the fruit of the garden fig tree after the following manner: During the months of June and July, the peasants take the Orni, when their gnats are ready to break out, and carry them to the garden fig tree: If they do not mind the time with the utmost exactness, the Orni drop; and the fruit of the domestic tree not ripening, for want of its proper puncture, will likewise fall soon after. The husbandman is so sensible of this, that he never lets a morning pass without carefully inspecting his Orni, and transferring such of them as are in forwardness to his garden fig trees; otherwise he would lose his crop. Sometirnes indeed they supply the want of Orni, or remedy their own neglect, by strewing over their fig trees a quantity of the Ascholymbros, a plant common enough in some of the islands, whose fruit contains gnats proper for pricking the figs; but perhaps they are the very gnats of the Orni, which are used to hover about this plant and feed upon its flowers. In short, by the care of the peasant and his good management of the Orni, the garden

figs become ripe in about six weeks after they have received the puncture of the insect. These figs are very good when fresh gathered; but after they have dried them in the sun for some time, they put them into ovens, whereby they lose their fine taste, as I have observed already; though on the other hand they have this advantage, that the heat destroys the eggs discharged in them by the gnats of the Orni, from whence small worms would otherwise be infallibly produced, and the fruit damaged and consumed.*

Now I am treating of the natural history of Scio, it would be unpardonable to omit giving a particular account of its lentisks, which are carefully cultivated, and yield large quantities of a valuable gum called mastich, which indeed is not peculiar to, but is chiefly the product of this island, and esteemed much better than that of any other country. There are twenty villages in Scio, where they have plantations of lentisks, each of which villages is obliged annually to pay to the Grand Signior a certain. quantity of mastich, according to the number of trees they culti

*After M. Tournefort has given the like account of caprification, as practised in the islands of the Archipelago, he makes this reflection: "What an expense of time and pain is here for a fig, and that but an indifferent one at last! I could not sufficiently admire,” says he," the patience of the Greeks, busied above two months in carrying these prickers from one tree to another." But their industry, it seems, is amply rewarded; for one of their trees usually bears between two and three hundred pounds of figs, whereas those of France seldom yield above twenty-five or thirty. "The prickers," continues the same ingenious traveller, "contribute perhaps to the maturity of the fruit of the garden fig tree, by causing the nutritious juice to extravasate those vessels they tear asunder in depositing their eggs. Perhaps too, besides their eggs, they leave behind them some sort of liquor, proper to ferment greatly with the milk of the figs, and make the flesh of them tender. Our figs in Provence, and even at Paris, ripen much sooner for having their buds pricked with a straw dipped in olive oil. Plums and pears pricked by some insect do likewise ripen much faster for it, and the flesh round such puncture is better tasted than the rest. It is not to be disputed but that a considerable change happens to the contexture of fruits so pricked, just the same as to the parts of animals pierced with any sharp instrument."