PERSONA NON GRATA 



45 



pest, entirely hollow the whole length of its 

 trunk, and yet may flourish and bear fruit. 

 The tree lives in its outer layers. It may be 

 crippled in almost any way, if the bark is left 

 uninjured ; but if an inch of bark is cut out 

 entirely around the tree, it will die, for the sap 

 can no longer run up and down to nourish it. 



This is the sapsucker's crime : he girdles the 

 tree, not at his first coming, nor yet at his 

 second, not with one row of holes, nor yet 

 with two ; but finally, after years perhaps, when 

 row after row of punctures, each checking a 

 little the flow of sap, have overlapped and offset 

 each other and narrowed the channels through 

 which it could mount and descend, until the flow 

 is stopped. Then the tree dies. It is not the 

 holes he makes, nor the sap he draws, but the 

 way he places his holes that makes the sap- 

 sucker an unwelcome visitor. For an unaccept- 

 able individual he is to the farmer, persona 

 non grata, as kings say of ambassadors who do 

 not please their majesties. What shall we do 

 with him, the only black sheep in all the wood- 

 pecker flock ? Let him alone, unless we are pos- 

 itively sure that we know him from every other 

 kind of woodpecker. The damage he does is 

 trifling compared with what we should do if we 

 made war upon other woodpeckers for some sup- 

 posed wrong-doing of the sapsucker. 



