PRICKLY PEAR.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1
SIR,—In your issue of January 31st there appeared an article antler the heading " A Vegetable Terror," front which I got the impression that a contribution from South Africa might be of use to your correspondents and other Australian com- rades.
The difficulty and cost of eradication are certainly very great, but well worth while where the land is rich and irrigable. We have several poisons, but none which we can confidently recommend. There is no need to carry out expensiVe experiments in the hope that " the plant wizard" may some day produce a spineless variety. Mr. Luther Bur- bank, of Taulu Rosa, California, has produced and " fired " a number of varieties, all spineless, some rich in fruiting qualities, others large of leaf or higher in food value. These are well known in Smith Africa and elsewhere. But Mr. Burbank was not alone or first in discovering spineless " prickly " pear. It is believed that a few thousand years ago this was a popular desert food for man and beast, and that North Africa and other parts were largely dependent on this plant. The preponderance of " prickly " over "spineless" is due to quite commonplace factors, "reversion " or "degenera- tion" some call it; but in plant times it is,due to -(1) extreme seediness to hybridize; (2) the fact that animals eat the spine- less and keep it down, but leave the prickly severely alone.
This plant was unknown in South Africa a hundred years ago or so, and is believed to have been brought from North Africa by birds, monkeys, baboons, and floods. In South Africa there are any number of varieties, and among them plenty of wild spineless quite as smooth as Mr. Burbank's. On some farms all are spineless. Differences in fruit quality and bearing are most noticeable. This is taken to suggest the view that in the long, long ago they did practise selection, which we are busy "discovering" now. The old folks knew all about it in the date and the fig some four thousand years ago—why not in the prickly pears?
The fruit is not a high-class food, but it is class enough to upset our labour supply when the season is on and natives and poor alike prefer to take it easy and live on this fruit instead of working.
Our ostriches have to be fenced off from it because they eat so greedily that they blind themselves with the small thorns. The leaf has not a high food value—very low .(about 90 per cent. water), but there is something in it worth studying. They eat off all the leaves of the spineless plant that are within reach, hence the spineless are almost always seen in tree form with solid trunk and branching head, and the -prickly as a dense scrub. It is well known that there are certain kinds of prickly densely covered with spines which cattle will go for at any cost at all. These individual treees are given no chance to grow in spite of Nature's armour. All cattle pick them out and go for theni—often with the result that they die of inflammation of the lips, tongue, and throat. Clearly there is something in it!
But, to be practical, your correspondent can advise his friends to try three courses with this pest while others puzzle out the extermination. First, since they have it, make the best of it by selecting the spineless; ones, and plant them, as hedges, for the day of drought and need. Don't attempt seed. The cross-pollination will beat yea. Second, try using the whole plant for manufacture of commercial alcohol. Our natives can distil a pretty hot drink from it. Third, use the whole lot, spineless and prickly, old and young, leaf and trunk, as food when you are short owing to drought. There is no need to wait or worry for a way to get rid of thorns; singeing, rubbing, &c., have been -practised, but there is a 'ridiculously simple plan. Just buy one of the turnip or mangold pulpers commonly in use in England-and a 3 h.p. oil or steam engine and put the whole lot through it. The small spines (hairs),
which are most irritating, are rendered innocuous by the juice. The large thorns, which are more dangerous beeauss of their hard, brittle points, are invariably " topped" and blunted on the journey through the machine and are greatly influenced by the slimy liquid. You can " wash your hands " or your face in the pulp as it conies from the machines without the risk of finding a single spine.
Five per cent. weight of crushed grain or meal or more of bran will make a good dairy feed or pig feed at any time, but not a balanced ration; it is insurpassable. Some farmers use it—drought or no drought—and claim for it high milk- producing properties. I cannot guarantee that, but the rest is personal experience.
Another "tip": One sliced leaf, left to bleed for an hour or so in a four•-gallon tin of whitewash, will cause the latter to stick on walls or fruit trees almost like paint.—I am, Sir, &e., SOUTH AFRICAN.
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