CORRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION 



309 



festive board. This device was a great 

 time saver. 



Those eight pigs differed just as much 

 as any family of that size. There was 

 the lazy fellow who took his time and that 

 of all the rest, while at the other extreme 

 was his larger brother, who might have 

 been trained at the traditional railwa\- 

 lunch counter. Another reminded me of 

 a man who worked for us when I was a 

 small boy, who "could eat a canal through 

 mashed potatoes and gravy." And then 

 there was the quiet little sister, perfectly 

 content to wait until all the rest were fed, 

 before she came to the table. 



I have been told that each pig has its 

 own place at its mother's dinner table, 

 and the actions of this lot when it was 

 necessary to substitute a new rubber nip- 

 ple indicates that this opinion may be 

 correct. 



We found that getting up by the alarm 

 clock in the middle of the night was just 

 as strenuous as conducting a cow test for 

 advanced registry, but now that it is over, 

 and our pigs are growing, we are glad 

 we tried to save them. "The only way 

 to learn how to do a thing is to do it," and 

 then "tell the neighbors;" hence this 

 letter. ' H. E. Deats. 



The foregoing lines were penned "in 

 the pleasant month of May." As I sit 

 on the top rail of the orchard fence this 

 chill November morning, and watch that 

 litter of pigs, a bit of current slang seems 

 to express my opinion. "Never again" 

 will we take the trouble to bring up a 

 family of orphan pigs. When we figure 

 the time and material lavished on them, 

 and compare them with another litter of 

 eight of the same age, there is no doubt 

 of our failure, from the commercial stand- 

 point.— H. E. D. 



How were These Trees Planted? 



West Devonport, Tasmania, 



Australia. 

 To the Editor: — 



It is fascinating to speculate on the 

 various methods by which the flora of 

 a country was conveyed thither by 

 purely natural agencies, before civil- 

 ized man came upon the scene and 

 mixed things up so indiscriminately as 

 he has done. Even now, if we keep 

 our eyes open in our wanderings, we 

 may at times see some of these meth- 

 ods, or their recent results. 



Early last month, while pushing 

 through some scrub of boobyalla and 

 beyera on this coast, I came upon two 

 small trees of the Victorian hedge lau- 

 rel (Pittosporum undulatum) growing 

 among the tall bushes. The only pre- 

 vious record of the tree's spontaneous 

 growth in our island was made by Mr. 

 Emmett, years ago, while he was su- 

 perintending the cutting of a track 

 through the forest adjacent to the Ar- 

 thur River, one hundred and fifty miles 

 to the west. Although Mr. Emmett 

 searched over a considerable space, he 

 was able to find only the solitary spec- 

 imen. The question arises, How did 

 these widely separated trees get here? 

 Wind as the agent is out of the ques- 

 tion ; so, to my mind, is water. We 

 must put aside the improbable supposi- 

 tion that the small seeds might have 

 floated across two hundred miles or so 

 of sea from the Victorian (Australia) 

 coast, since the plants, which were 

 growang near the beach, were too high 

 above the tide mark to have been 

 thrown there by the waves. In the 

 case of the Arthur River specimen, it 

 is more improbable still, as the river 

 has a swift current always flowing 

 down through wild bush country. 

 Naturally I thought of bird agency, but 

 all our migrants from the mainland 

 are insectivorous, except the waders, 

 and they live on worms, small crabs 

 and mollusks. On this subject I con- 

 sulted Professor Ewart, Government 

 Botanist to the State of Victoria, and 

 he gave it as his opinion that, as the 

 seeds of the Pittosporum are sticky, 

 they would readily adhere to the feet 

 of our migrants, if such happened to 

 perch on trees w^ith ripe seeds, or on 

 the ground where the seeds had fallen. 

 This, I think, is the correct solution, 

 especially as one of the small trees was 

 growing up through the centre of a 

 large boobyalla bush (Myoporum) in 

 just such a situation as it would find 

 if the seed had been rubbed from the 

 foot of a bird perching in the bush, 

 after its flight across the intervening 

 sea. 



If you consider this note sufficiently 

 interesting, you are welcome to print 

 it ; it may elicit other instances from 

 your readers. 



H. Stuart Dove. 



