78 PETER MACOWAX. 



Right through well-nigh a score of years — i.e.. from the latter 

 half of the eighties until deep into the present decade — the familiar 

 initials P.M.O. were constantly to be seen in the correspondence 

 columns gf the Cape Agricultural Journal, under paragraphs of 

 the most varied contents, written in response to the queries of 

 agriculturists and others in all parts of South Africa, and the 

 enquirer often got much information that he did not seek. Many 

 of these paragraphs were as trenchant as they were instructive : 

 their number was legion, but one or two illustrations may not be 

 out of place here. A correspondent had complained that his 

 orange trees were dying from the top as the effect of some un- 

 known disease ; the Professor, after hinting that the trees had 

 become exhausted through leafing and fruiting without the supply 

 of root food, proceeded to philosophise as follows ; 



" ' ]\Ian is born to trouble,' quoth Job, a highly sensible old patriarch, 

 and it is a precious good thing for him he is, or else what a lazy, lotus-eating 

 life he would lead. A farmer once called on me, saying : ' I want to hear 

 of a new plant that shall take no trouble to cultivate, and give a large return.' 

 I replied : ' I know exactly what you want ; it sows, weeds, reaps, thrashes, 

 bags itself, — goes to market, sells itself, and puts the amount to your credit 

 in the bank, — but it isn't invented yet.' Yet for that really fine old moral 

 lesson my visitor was not thankful, but swore I had insulted him. Not 1 , 

 forsooth : no trouble, no returns, is in the very nature of things." 



On another occasion a farmer put a question on the subject 

 of pollarding. 



" The question "—thus ran P.M.O.'s answer — " is a very important 

 one. Shall we pollard or not pollard ? A yes or no answer is im- 

 possible. Let us try and take the matter to pieces and handle its parts 

 separately. A young tree may for our purpose be considered as a cylin- 

 drical structure of several layers, some actively growing, some passively 

 contributing to the stability of the whole. The most rapid growth takes 

 place at the tip of the cjdinder. It is there that the greater part of the 

 tree's organic activity seems concentrated. Wood layers are being rapidly 

 formed as fast" as the apex lengthens. Now suppose no provision beyond 

 that for upward extension to exist, the act of pollarding or stumping back 

 the tree would stop all further growth, and the tree would speedily perish. 



It is only the inexhaustible power of the trees to alter the main 



line of axial growth by branching out from buds, which enables them to sur- 

 vive the hacking and hewing to which they are submitted. Say I order 

 a young oak for planting out. It comes to me in shape of a live or six foot 

 truncheon, about 2\ inches diameter, with a few projecting remnants of 

 roots, haggled off with a blunt spade. The original tap root, which con- 

 tinues downwards the upward growth of the stem, is gone completely. Every 

 vestige of the head of foliage is gone, too, and a straight saw-cut shows you 

 where the tree has been beheaded. The purveyor of oak trees will assure 

 you that it is all right, that this is the recognised way of planting, that he 

 is a practical man and has planted his thousands of saplings. In fact, nine 

 times out of ten, the least demur on your part to accept this wretched cripple 

 as the proper beginning out of which a line oak shall grow is resented as 

 a personal affront. Well, you give in for the sake of peace, and plant your 

 truncheon. So bountiful is tree nature that in ordinar}' cases the wounded 

 root stumps will speedily put out a multitude of threadlike feeding rootlets, 

 the sap will begin to ascend, and under the barbarous saw-cut where the 

 head was taken off, sundry buds will appear, and little branchlets push their 

 way up. The scar left bj?^ the saw begins to show a corky callus-layer all 

 round its edge, and as soon as some one of the new branchlets gets ahead 

 of its neighbours, this layer increases and spreads year by year further over 

 the dead-wood surface of the scar. If you carefully cut away all the branch- 

 lets but the one leader, the process is expedited. Ultimately the whole scar 

 is covered up, perhaps in six or seven years' time, and the leader is now a 



