CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
James 3:5. A matter.—Better, “a forest.” The picture presented is of the wrapping of some vast forest in a flame by the falling of a single spark. Philo uses the same figure: “As the smallest spark will, if duly fanned, kindle a vast pyre, so is the least element of virtue capable of growth till the whole nature of the man glows with a new warmth and brightness.”
James 3:6. Course of nature.—Wheel of birth; R.V. margin, “whole sphere of life.” The wheel of life which begins rolling at birth, and continues rolling until death. “From the beginning of life till its close, the tongue is an ever-present inflammatory element of evil.” Hell.—Gehenna; the place of torment, as distinguished from Hades, the abode of the dead, or the unseen world.
James 3:7. Serpents.—Or, more generally, “creeping things.” “Kind of beasts” would be better “nature of beasts”; then “mankind” would read “by the nature of man.” Every nature is continually tamed, and is kept in a state of subjection by the human race.
James 3:8. Unruly evil.—ἀκατάσχετον, irrestrainable. Alex. and Vatican manuscripts read ἀκατάστατον, a restless, inconstant evil. Prefer “uncontrollable.” Deadly.—Death-bringing.
James 3:10. So to be.—“These things ought not to occur in this way.”
James 3:11. Send forth.—Or, “spout out.”
James 3:12.—The better manuscripts render thus, “Neither can a salt [spring] yield sweet water.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— James 3:5-12
The Agency of the Tongue for Good and Evil.—The tongue, as a bodily organ, has no moral quality, good or bad. It is the organ of speech, and does but help to express thought and feeling in language, by means of which one man may influence another. The language-power is man’s dignity and man’s peril. So truly is it the expression of a man for apprehension by other men, that it can be said, “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” In this paragraph St. James reminds us in what different spheres the tongue works, and what different things, good and bad, it can do. Evidently it is so supremely important an agency in our lives, that every effort should be made to have it, and to keep it, in full control. “The tongue is the best part of man, and also his worst; with good government none is more useful; and without it, none more mischievous.”
I. The tongue is man’s agency for boasting.—“And boasteth great things”; or, “vaunts great words which bring about great acts of mischief.” Boasting is the expression of pride and self-conceit; and it implies that a man fails to see things as they really are, but swells them out by his imagination, so that they may increase his self-importance. The boaster
(1) injures himself by his boasting, for it is a habit that grows by exercise;
(2) does mischief to others, because undue praise of self always tries to gain support in the disparagement of other people—and men are always injured when they are compelled to take up false impressions;
(3) dishonours God, who “desireth truth in the inward parts,” and cannot allow His work in a man to be exaggerated, misrepresented, and therefore misjudged. Boasting is one of the surest signs of moral weakness, Those who give way to it are altogether untrustworthy in the relations of life. No one feels safe in having dealings with them.
II. The tongue is man’s agency for inciting to moral evil.—“The tongue is a fire.” A spark of fire which, if only it fall in fitting place, will do fearfully destructive work.
1. The unclean word may burn up innocence in other souls.
2. The slanderous word may burn up the reputations of other people.
3. The critical word may burn up trustfulness in other people.
4. The doubtful word may burn up honesty in other people. A word spoken, or heard, in early life may work as a deadly poison through a whole life. The serpent in Eden incited Eve to disobey with his words. “Every idle [mischievous] word that man shall speak, he shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”
III. The tongue is man’s agency for doing wild and wicked things.—“A world of iniquity among our members.” With this should be taken the untamableness of the tongue. It is a wild animal, that even at its best, and in the best men, is but imperfectly brought into control. “Three temptations to ‘smite with the tongue are specially powerful for evil, viz. as a relief from passion, as a gratification of spite, as revenge for wrong. The first is experienced by hot-tempered folk; the second yielded to by the malicious; the third welcomed by the otherwise weak and defenceless; and all of us at times are in each of these divisions.” See the prayer of the Catechism, that we may be kept from “evil-speaking, lying, and slandering.” “The tongue is an unruly [restless] evil, full of deadly poison.” What evil is wrought by the slanderer, traducer, liar, foul-mouthed, and blasphemer!
IV. The tongue is man’s agency for both blessing and cursing.—It is not St. James’s immediate purpose to show how much good can be accomplished by the tongue, when it is in fitting Christian control. He is dealing with the unrestrained tongue, as that is suggested by the free talk of the would-be teachers. He is showing what lengths the evil may run to when the curb is taken off. Here he is showing what contrasted things it can do. It can “bless God,” and at the very same time “curse men.” What a strange and unreasonable thing that appears to be! How impossible it should be to Christian disciples, whose fountain has been cleansed, whose will is renewed, and who ought to have only pure, loving, worthy things for which they want the tongue to be their agency. James 3:11 is probably “a vivid picture of the mineral springs abounding in the Jordan Valley, near the Dead Sea; with which might be contrasted the clear and sparkling rivulets of the north, fed by the snows of Lebanon. Nature had no confusion in her plans; and thus to pour out cursing and blessing from the same lips were unnatural indeed.” Get the control which makes the tongue utter blessing, and it will cease to curse. Fail to get the control, and let the tongue curse; it will then very soon cease to be able to bless.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
James 3:5-6. The Tongue.—In the development of Christian truth a peculiar office was assigned to the apostle James. It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the spiritual law of liberty, and to exhibit faith as the most active principle within the breast of man. It was St. John’s to say that the deepest quality in the bosom of Deity is love, and to assert that the life of God in man is love. It was the office of St. James to assert the necessity of moral rectitude: his very name marked him out peculiarly for this office; he was emphatically called “the Just”; integrity was his peculiar characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real. Accordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will find it is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the first principles of morality against the semblances of religion. This is the mind breathing through it all: all this talk about religion, and spirituality—words, words, words—nay, let us have realities. How can we speak of the gospel, when the first principles of morality are forgotten? when Christians are excusing themselves, and slandering one another? How can the superstructure of love and faith be built, when the very foundations of human character—justice, mercy, truth—have not been laid?
I. The licence of the tongue.—
1. The first licence given to the tongue is slander. It is compared to poison. The deadliest poisons are those for which no test is known. In the drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert day and night into restless misery. In St. James’s day, as now, idle men and women went about from house to house, dropping slander as they went, and yet you could not take up that slander and detect the falsehood there.
2. The second licence given to the tongue is in the way of persecution: “therewith curse we men.” Even in St. James’s day that spirit had begun. Christians persecuted Christians. From that day it has continued, through long centuries, up to the present time. Persecution is that which affixes penalties upon views held, instead of upon life led.
II. The guilt of this licence.—
1. The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does himself. Calumny effects a dissipation of spiritual energy. Few men suspect how much mere talk fritters away spiritual energy—that which should be spent in action spends itself in words. In these days of loud profession, and bitter, fluent condemnation, it is well for us to learn the Divine force of silence.
2. The next feature in the guilt of calumny is its uncontrollable character. “The tongue can no man tame.” You cannot arrest a calumnious tongue; you cannot arrest the calumny itself. Neither can you stop the consequences of a slander. It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burned unquenched beneath the water; or like the weeds which, when you have extirpated them in one place, are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot.
3. The third element of guilt lies in the unnaturalness of the calumny. “My brethren, these things ought not so to be”; ought not—that is, they are unnatural. The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature; evil is evil, because it is unnatural. The teaching of Christ was the recall of man to nature. Christianity is the regeneration of our whole nature, not the destruction of one atom of it. The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty, because it contradicts this.
4. The fourth point of guilt is the diabolical character of slander. The tongue is “set on fire of hell.” This is no mere strong expression; it contains deep and emphatic meaning. Slander is diabolical. “Devil,” in the original, means traducer or slanderer. Beware of that habit which becomes the slanderer’s life, of magnifying every speck of evil and closing the eye to goodness—till at last men arrive at the state in which generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes impossible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the heart, and that is hell. Love is the only remedy for slander.—F. W. Robertson.
James 3:6. The Evils of the Tongue.—Amongst the most important of all subjects must be reckoned the government of the tongue. The consideration of it is well calculated to convince the profane, pluck off the mask from the hypocrites, humble the sincere, and to edify every description of persons. In these words we have given us such a description of the tongue, as, if it had proceeded from any other than an inspired writer, would have been deemed a libel upon human nature.
I. The true character of the human tongue.—
1. It is a fire. Fire, in its original formation, was intended for the good of man; if subordinate, it is highly beneficial, but its tendency is to consume and to destroy. So with the tongue. Even the smallest spark is capable of producing such incalculable mischief as may be beyond the power of man to repair. So a single motion of the tongue may irritate and inflame a man, and change him instantly into a savage beast and an incarnate devil.
2. It is a world of iniquity. There is not any sin which does not stand in the nearest connection with the tongue, and employ it in its service. Search the long catalogue of sins against God, against our neighbour, against ourselves, and there will not be found one that has not the tongue as its principal ally.
II. Its effects.—
1. Defiling. Sin in the heart defiles the soul; when uttered by the lips, “it defileth the whole body.” Utterance gives solidity and permanency to that which before existed in idea. Though all communications are not equally polluting, yet there is a stain left, which nothing but the Redeemer’s blood can ever wash away.
2. Destruction. Look at individuals; what malignant passions it has kindled in them! Visit families; what animosities and inextinguishable feuds! Survey churches, nations; it has kindled flames of war, and spread desolation.
III. The reason of its producing these effects.—
1. It is “set on fire of hell.” Satan is the source and author of all the evils that proceed from the tongue. The wickedness of the heart may account for much; but if the flames were not fanned by Satanic agency, they would not rage with such an irresistible force, and to such a boundless extent.
1. How great must be the evils of the human heart. If God should leave us without restraint, there is not one of us but would proclaim all the evil of his heart, as much as the most loathsome sensualist or most daring blasphemer.
2. How much do we need the influences of the Holy Spirit. It is absolutely impossible for man to tame this unruly member. The Holy Spirit will help our infirmities. Christ will give us His Spirit if we call upon Him.
3. How careful should we be of every word we utter. Immense injury may we do by one unguarded word. We may take away a character which we can never restore, or inflict a wound we can never heal. We must account for every idle word. Let our tongue be as choice silver, or a tree of life, to enrich and comfort the Lord’s people. Let our “speech be always with grace seasoned with salt,” for God’s honour and man’s good.—C. Simeon, M.A.
The Sins of the Tongue.
I. Among the many sins of the tongue are idle words. “Avoid foolish talking.” A wise man “sets a watch on the door of his lips” even when he utters a pleasantry.
II. Malicious words are cousins in sin to idle words. Kind words are the oil that lubricates every-day inter-course. There was an ancient male-diction that the tongue of the slanderer should be cut out. A slanderer is a public enemy.
III. A filthy imagination comes out on the tongue.
IV. There is profane swearing. This is the most gratuitous and inexcusable of sins. The man who swears turns speech into a curse, and before his time rehearses the dialect of hell.—Theodore L. Cuyler.
Defiling Power of the Tongue.—There is a great pollution and defilement in sins of the tongue. Defiling passions are kindled, vented, and cherished by this unruly member. And the whole body is often drawn into sin and guilt by the tongue. The snares into which men are sometimes led by the tongue are insufferable to themselves and destructive of others. The affairs of mankind and of societies are often thrown into confusion, and all is set aflame, by the tongues of men. There is no age of the world, nor any condition of life, private or public, but will afford examples of this. Where the tongue is guided and wrought upon by a fire from heaven, there it kindleth good thoughts, holy affections, and ardent devotions. But when it is set on fire of hell, as in all undue heats it is, there it is mischievous, producing rage and hatred, and those things which serve the purposes of the devil. As therefore you would dread fires and flames, you should dread contentions, revilings, slanders, lies, and everything that would kindle the fire of wrath in your own spirit, or in the spirit of others.—Matthew Henry.
James 3:8. The Taming of the Tongue.—Here is a single position, guarded with a double reason. The position is—“No man can tame the tongue.” The reasons:
1. It is unruly.
2. It is full of deadly poison. Each reason hath a terrible second. The evil hath for its second “unruliness”; the poisonfulness hath “deadly.” The fort is so barricaded that it is hard scaling it; the refractory rebel so guarded with evil and poison, so warded with unruly and deadly, as if it were with giants in an enchanted tower, as they fabulate, that no man can tame it.
I. The nature of the thing to be tamed.—The tongue, which is
(1) a member; and
(2) an excellent, necessary, little, and singular member.
II. The difficulty of accomplishing this work of taming.—A threefold instruction for the use of the tongue is insinuated to us.
1. Let us not dare to pull up God’s mounds; nor like wild beasts, break through the circular limits wherein He hath cooped us. “Weigh thy words in a balance, and make a door and bar for thy mouth.” Let thy words be few, true, weighty, that thou mayest not speak much, not falsely, not vainly. Remember the bounds.
2. Since God hath made the tongue one, have not thou a tongue and a tongue. Some are double-tongued, as they are double-hearted. The slanderer, the flatterer, the swearer, the talebearer, are monstrous men; as misshapen stigmatics as if they had two tongues and but one eye, two heads and but one foot.
3. Do not put all strength into the tongue, to the weakening and enervation of the other parts. He that made the tongue can tame the tongue. He that gave man a tongue to speak can give him a tongue to speak well. Let us move our tongue to intreat help for our tongues; and, according to their office, let us set them on work to speak for themselves. We must not be idle ourselves; the difficulty must spur us to more earnest contention. Look how far the heart is good; so far the tongue. If the heart believe, the tongue will confess; if the heart be meek, the tongue will be gentle; if the heart be angry, the tongue will be bitter. The tongue is but the hand without to show how the clock goes within. A vain tongue discovers a vain heart. “The heart of fools is in their mouth; but the mouth of the wise is in their heart.”—Thomas Adams.
James 3:10. The Discipline of the Tongue from the Christian Standpoint.—“My brethren, these things ought not so to be.” The Christian regards his body, and the various relations with men into which his body enables him to come, as the agency and the sphere in which his renewed and regenerated self is to find and exercise its ministry. His idea for himself he gains through a proper apprehension of the human Christ. Christ was a Spirit, but that Spirit could only work through the agency of a human body, and in those spheres which the human body enabled him to occupy. It was therefore essential that Christ should have His body—every part and force of His body—under perfect control, and at perfect command. His experience would not really be like ours if He had that command as a result of something other than self-discipline. The delay of His ministry until He was thirty years old suggests that, even in His case, prolonged self-culture was necessary, in order to gain practical command of all His bodily powers and forces. If we can realise this, and carefully keep away the idea that He had a sinful nature, we shall find ourselves drawn nearer to One, who was “in all points tempted like as we are,” for we shall see that His powers of silence, restrained speech, wise speech, were as truly (on the human side) the results of self-discipline, and self-culture, as the same speech-mastery is in our case. It will then come to us that we have in our Divine-human Lord the model of that control of our tongue, of that mastery of our speech-power, which we recognise as the first Christian demand made on us, and the last to which we succeed in worthily responding. The impossibility of gaining that self command, which so often oppresses us, is relieved when we can see that one man has fully gained it, and that, as a man, He gained it in the same way that we must, by the self-discipline of years, in the inspiration and leading of the indwelling Spirit.
James 3:11-12. The Lesson of the Fountain and the Fig.—These illustrations impress the inconsistency of Christians using their tongues for unworthy ministries. With a clean soul can only go clean uses of the power of speech. The thought is similar to that so abruptly, and almost startlingly, expressed by St. John. The Christian man “cannot sin, because he is born of God.” Sin and the divine life in souls cannot conceivably go together. A fountain pours forth only what is consistent with itself. If its store of water is in any sense impregnated, you cannot expect to draw sweet water from it. If the stores are sweet, you cannot expect to find foul streams pouring forth, and it would be a surprise and an offence if you did. A wild fig tree properly enough bears wild figs; but if the branch is grafted into the good fig, and receives its good life, you properly expect that it will bear only good figs. It should be thus with Christians. What a man’s speech should be is not here considered; what a Christian man’s speech should be is presented to our view. And it must be consistent with himself, the fitting expression of his new life. You do not expect to hear unclean or unloving speech from a Christian professor. You are sure that there is something wrong if you do. This consideration suggests the appeal which St. James would make. The fountain, in the case of the Christian, had long been polluted, and the streams flowing from it had long been foul, so that the very channels and pipes had become impregnated with evil, and defiled even fresh water that flowed through them. In the case of the Christian the fountain-head had been cleansed and sweetened, so that what was ready to flow forth was pure; but there remained the difficulty of the foul channels and pipes. And the work of daily Christian living is the cleansing of the old channels and pipes, so that the cleansed fountain may pour forth the streams that, untainted and wholly sweet, shall flow into all the associations of the life—sweet even flowing from the tongue which had so long been the instrument of evil.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
James 3:6. Mischief done by the Slanderous Tongue.—A man who, for a moment’s gossiping gratification, drops an idle word affecting a neighbour’s character, resembles that Scotchman who, from partiality to the flora of his native land, sowed a little thistledown in the British colony where he had raised his tabernacle, and where that nuisance to agriculturists had been unknown up to that time. It grew and flourished; and breezes—like the active wind of talk, that soon propagates a slander—carried the winged seeds hither and thither, to found for their obnoxious species thousands of new homes.—F. W. Robertson.
The Consequences of Slander.—Never can you stop the consequences of a slander. You may publicly prove its falsehood, you may sift every atom, explain and annihilate it, and yet, years after you had thought that all had been disposed of for ever, the mention of a name wakes up associations in the mind of some one who heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended to the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused recollection of the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully, “But were there not some suspicious circumstances connected with him?” It is like the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burnt unquenched beneath the water, or like the weeds which when you have extirpated them in one place are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot, at the distance of many hundred yards; or to use the metaphor of St. James himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it goes, and burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own speed increases; “it sets on fire the whole course of nature” (lit. “the wheel of nature”). You may tame the wild beast; the conflagration of the American forest will cease when all the timber and all the dry underwood is consumed; but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning.
Mischief of a Bitter Word.—A bitter word dropped from our lips against a brother is like a pistol fired amongst mountains. The sharp report is caught up and intensified and echoed by rocks and caves, till it emulates the thunder. So a thoughtless, unkind word in passing from mouth to mouth receives progressive exaggerations, and, snowball-like, increases as it rolls. Gossip-mongers are persons who tear the bandages from social wounds, and prevent their healing; they are persons who bring flint and steel, and acid and alkali together, and are justly chargeable with all the fire and ebullition. A whisper-word of slander is like that fox with a firebrand tied to its tail that Samson sent among the standing corn of the Philistines. It brings destruction into wide areas of peace and love. Evil-speaking is like a freezing wind, that seals up the sparkling waters and tender juices of flowers, and binds up the hearts of men in uncharitableness and bitterness of spirit, as the earth is bound up in the grip of winter, when
“The bitter blast of north and east
Makes daggers at the sharpened eaves.”
James 3:6. The “Course of Nature.”—The Greek word translated “course” is derived from a verb signifying “to run,” and according to the way the accent is placed, it is read either a wheel or a course. In the verse the former sense is preferable, as expressing the constant recurrence of similar events in this life; so the old Greek poet (Anacreon) puts it: “Like a chariot-wheel our life rolls on.” And Isidorus writes, “Time like a wheel rolls round upon itself.” But the allusion of James has also been applied to the unceasing succession of men born one after another, as if he had said, “The tongue has been the means of plaguing our ancestors; it still plagues us, and will hereafter plague our descendants.” Plutarch uses the simile, the “stream of nature,” referring to the successive generations of men; and Simplicius speaks of “the unceasing circle of nature, wherein there is a constant production of some things by the decay of others.” The best critics seem to consider that the apostle has mankind in view in this clause of the verse.—Parkhurst.
James 3:8. The Tongue.—“Some men have a tongue as rough as a cat’s, and biting as an adder’s.” “The tongue was intended for an organ of the Divine praise; but the devil often plays upon it, and then it sounds like the screech-owl.” “Let your language be restrained within its proper channels; if a river swells over its bank, it leaves only dirt and filthiness behind.” “The evil-speaker or whisperer is accuser, witness, judge, and executioner of the innocent.” “In the temple at Smyrna there were looking-glasses which represented the best face as crooked and ugly; so is every false tongue.” “It is a fountain both of bitter waters and of pleasant; it sends forth blessing and cursing; it praises God and rails at men; it is sometimes set on fire, and then it puts whole cities in combustion; it is unruly, and no more to be restrained than the breath of the tempest; it is volatile and fugitive; reason should go before it, and when it does not repentance comes after it.” “There are some persons so full of nothings, that, like the strait sea of Pontus, they perpetually empty themselves by their mouths, making every company or single person they fasten on to be their Propontis.” “The talking man makes himself artificially deaf, being like a man in the steeple when the bells ring.” “Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard that all the noises and pratings of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissolutions of the tongue.” When it breaks out in trivialities and vanities, these “are like flies and gnats upon the margin of a pool; they do not sting like an asp or bite deep as a bear, yet they can vex a man into a fever of impatience, and make him incapable of rest and counsel.”
James 3:10. Eastern Swearing and Offensive Language.—Oaths may be classified as of two kinds—in one the name of God is used, in the other that of some other object; in both cases for the same purpose. Though it is common for people in the East at the present day to use the name of God in their oaths, yet they more frequently swear by something else—as by some person or themselves, or some part of themselves, as the head or hand, or by some animal or inanimate thing. Nothing is more common than the use of such oaths. They not only employ them to confirm what they say, but to add, as it seems, strength to their expressions. (See Matthew 26:74.) But beyond this they employ them with no purpose whatever—even the most solemn forms—in speaking to their animals, or in soliloquising, until, to those who can understand the language they speak, nothing is more wearisome or painful. They use them in all companies, and on all occasions—both men and women, old and young. There seems to be among them an utter perversion of conscience as to the moral intent or obligation of an oath. Aside from the positive sin of thus employing an oath, this deadness of conscience is the worst feature, as it is one of the worst results of this thoughtlessly sinful practice. Surely the command of the Saviour to “swear not at all” has unusual pertinence and force in the presence of a custom at once so common and wicked. Again, the use of obscene and offensively bad language has a development among the Orientals wholly unknown to us. This also pervades all classes in the community, and is employed by both sexes. I was informed by persons long resident in the East that the use of obscene, vile language passes any ordinary conception among any cooler-blooded Western people. I am sure I have never heard such torrents of verbal abuse anywhere else as in some parts of Egypt or Turkey or Palestine. We were pursued with the vilest epithets, for example, at Hebron, or in the streets of Shechem, or of Endor, or in some of the villages in Bashan, east of the Jordan. In speaking to each other, especially when angry, they not only heap abuse on one another, but on every member of their respective families—wife, children, father, mother, living or dead, present, past, and to come; and beyond this on their religion, in terms often so aggravatingly bad as that even a dragoman will refuse to repeat it. It is in reference to this almost universal practice the Saviour speaks when He says: “Whosoever shall say to his brother Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:22).
James 3:12. Grafting the Olive on the Fig Tree.—The metaphor here used is one which the Roman gardeners, who were fond of horticultural paradoxes, endeavoured to realise, and, according to an old naturalist, Columella was the first who attempted to unite by inoculation or inarching trees of so opposite a character as the fig and olive. The subjoined statement by Pliny is interesting as bearing upon this subject: “After that the fig tree hath gotten some strength, and is grown to a sufficient highness to bear a graft, the branch or bough of the olive being well cleansed and made neat, and the head end thereof thwited (sio) and shaped sharp, howbeit not yet cut from the mother stock, must be set fast in the shank of the fig tree, where it must be kept well and surely tied with bands. For the space of three years it is suffered to grow indifferently between two mothers, or rather, by the means thereof two mother stocks are grown and united together; but in the fourth year it is cut wholly from the own mother, and is become altogether an adopted child to the fig tree wherein it is incorporate. A pretty device, I assure you, to make a fig tree bear olives, the secret whereof is not known to every man” (Pliny, lib. xvii., cap. 19).—W. R. C.