PETER MACOWAN. 79 



thick, tapering substitute for the original stem which had l>een cut away. 

 Only a little difference in the texture of the external bark reveals that there 

 has been a surgical operation performed, and that nature has done her best 

 to heal and cover up the wound. Round comes the purveyor of oaks, and 

 triumphantly points to tlie new leader, now continuous with the origiiial 

 stem, as a proof of the soundness of his views and the superiority of his 

 practice over anybody else's science. Probably he is heard for his much 

 speaking, and the impossibility of getting a new idea into his head. But 

 is he right ? The dead scar is certainly closed in with living bark-layers, 

 but has no mischief been done ? During the several years that the saw- 

 scar has lain exposed, water has had free access to it. Countless fungus- 

 spores have dropped upon it and are ultimately shut in by the encroaching 

 callus-ring. Although all looks fair enough outside, these spores alternately 

 grow and lie dormant, as wet and dry seasons succeed, and push their 

 parasitic mycelial threads down from the dead scar-laj-er into the heartwood. 

 No long time is required to make the wood thus invaded moulder and decay. 

 That which should be hard timber becomes at last as friable as a biscuit, 

 and the tree, guaranteed to be ' all right,' is found to be as hollow as a 

 gun-barrel. Externally there is at first small token of the mischief, for 

 trees live, not on their heartwood, but on an annually renewed layer of 

 cambium and cortex just under the outer bark. But let there be the smallest 

 injury to the exterior coat — a branch broken off, a wanton chop from the 

 axe of a firewood stealer, and the fungous mycelium underneath takes on 

 its second stage of growth with the next rains. Great flabby masses of 

 sickly yellowish fungus-flesh grow out from the wound with a rapidity that 

 is simply astonishing. The under surface of these parasites is just one mass 

 of millions of spores, each one too small for sight, but every one capable 

 of dropping upon a pollarded surface and carrying on the destruction upon 

 which it has bred. 



" Precept is good, example is better. \\'ell, then, let us have an example. 

 All the oaks in the Cape Town Avenue have been planted on this ancient 

 ' practical ' plan, and as a result every one of them is decayed and hollow 

 at heart. They are not oak trees, but oak pollards, which is a very different 

 thing. Every year, in .\pril or May, some dozen of them exhibit huge fungus 

 masses of Polyporus sitlphiireiis grpwing out of their bark in fingered flakes 

 like dead men's hands. Many more are too far gone for even this symptom. 

 Their timber layer is utterly broken up, and its food constituents exhausted. 

 Even the polyporus cannot subsist on them any longer. They live on as 

 mere shells, nothing but the outside bark with a httle camliium and cortex 

 being left. 



" That is what comes of pollarding. Will you go and do likewise, now: you 

 are forewarned ? " 



For half a decade of years we have missed that facile pen, and 

 now it has been laid aside for aye : but disseminated throughout 

 numerous blue books, journals, manuscripts and leaflets are stores 

 of information of great value to this budding country, and couched 

 in clear and striking language. Several years ago an assortment 

 of these was printed by their author in a small booklet under the 

 name of Agricultural Miscellanea, and if, in these strenuous times, 

 anyone can be found with sufficient leisure, opportunity, energy 

 and ability to assort, revise and edit Dr. MacOwan's numerous 

 opuscula, such an one will, without doubt, be doing the land a 

 service. ' 



The four years which have elapsed since his retirement from the 

 Public Service Dr. MacOwan spent alternately in the homes of 

 his two sons-in-law. Professor Schonland, of Rhodes University 

 College, Gi^ahamstown, and Mr. Chase of Uitenhage, with the lattei 

 of whom he was residing at the time of his decease. 



C.FJ. 



