22 O. B. Miller 



of about twenty inches. They came to this little wood because 

 there was no other sneezewood in any forest for miles around. 



A little over two years ago the headman told his people they 

 must stop cutting the sneezewood coppice. To-day sprouts are 

 6 feet to 8 feet high, rather crooked but vigorous. The largest 

 stump to be found was 1 inches across, a little above the ground. 

 The larger ones have all been hacked away by women. Here 

 and there among the sneezewood are small plectronias and some 

 Dais cotinifoUa. 



In the forests of the Matatiele Main Reserve and the Mount 

 Frere Eastern Reserve which surround the little patches referred to 

 and which are known to the natives as the Datyane, are to be 

 found precisely similar conditions. But sneezewood is, it is be- 

 lieved, altogether absent, and is not found any nearer than 

 Insizwa forest seven miles away, as the crow flies; nor does it 

 occur in the opposite direction until one comes to Nyushweni on 

 the Qumbu border of Mount Frere, twenty-two miles distant. 



The writer was once enjoined by a well known artillery 

 brigadier, to state facts and leave senior officers to draw deduc- 

 tions. However, in the most tentative fashion he suggests that, 

 apart from heat, distribution is chiefly influenced by animals. 



A wdnged seed like that of the sneezewood is not likely to 

 travel more than a few hundred yards from the parent tree. On 

 a high gale it may be transported far afield and, exceptionally, 

 a seed may be carried to a distance in mud caked to the foot of 

 a buck or bird. 



Normally the seed must find a seed bed within a reasonable 

 distance and that must be in a spot climatically suited to 

 forest growth. Since man has destroyed the dense sugar 

 bush and the " fringing ** forests that formerly linked up the 

 high forests, this means of egress is denied. Similarly bush 

 buck are not likely to travel far from high forest over open 

 country. 



Even supposing a seed was accidentally transported and 

 germinated in a forest where none of that particular species grew, 

 in the case of dioecious trees like sneezewood and white ironwood, 

 there would be no reproduction of its kind. 



