Professor Martin Jones, Kings College, Newcastle Upon Tyne, University of Durham
Lecture memories: Prof's thin chalk line
By Dr Clive Dalton (Kings College 1952-56)
Botany
– of the pure kind
For those of us who whose main interest was animal husbandry, and had never done botany at school, having to study it in the
Intermediate year of our degree was somewhat of a chore (to put it mildly).
Botany labs in the old Armstrong College building were not taken terribly
seriously. Having to cut up a
pansy and draw its vital parts was a bit too far from growing oats, barley and
turnips which fed stock. Galloway bullocks didn't winter well on pansies!
Professor Merion Thomas in the pure Botany Department we all thought was
mad! He taught plant physiology
and could write on the blackboard behind his head without looking at it. By the end of the lecture, the board
was a total incomprehensible mess. And so were we!
But we admired the sincerity of lecturers
like Dr William A (Willie) Clark, husband or our dear ‘Dolly’ (a true Geordie) who took us for
agricultural botany in our second year.
A true Scott, I can still hear Dr Clark’s Ayrshire tongue with the common
speech habit of precise thinking Scott’s of inserting ‘aaay’ between every 2-3
words while their brains searched for the precise word. We used to call him ‘Dr
aaay Clarrrk’.
I became expert at predicting when he’d insert an
'aaay'. For example he’d always start a lecture with a wee synopsis of what was
on the menu:
‘Today aaay, we’re going to aaay, discuss
aaay, the function aaay of the parenchymatous barrrll shaped cells. Last time you will aaay remember that we
aaay …………….
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| My old Ag Dept scarf |
But at last in our second year, we were
with our own kind – agricultural botanists, who quickly made us realise that Ag
botany was a massive subject on its own, and not just a tack on to pure
botany.
It had the key role of feeding the world
from the beginning of time, and Dolly Clark was a world expert on ancient
cereal grains and their growing as the start of this.
Professor
Martin Jones
When we met Prof MJ who led the College’s
Agricultural Botany Department, I suppose he’d be in his 60s with graying hair
and mustache. His classical mid Wales accent (Welsh was his mother tongue) was
an inviting target for mimicry, a habit for which some of us were too prone.
But the great thing about this was that by
imitating his words, - and they were always precise uncluttered with jargon –
we learned them never to be forgotten.
Later in Wales, I was to learn that it was the style of a rousing sermon
in a Welsh chapel.
Many of the word intonations between
Geordie and Welsh are very similar, especially the rising inflection at the end
of a sentence, and I used this trick some four years later when I went to
Bangor in North Wales to do my PhD. The local Welsh speakers thought I was from
South Wales (and not English), so was readily accepted among the College farm staff
– and the farm dogs who had no English!
Prof’s
lectures
We knew the drill to so many of Prof’s
lectures. He would come into the lecture room on the second floor of our Ag
building, taking small steps with his stick, always in a 3-piece suit, and wearing
his Homburg hat which he always removed carefully. His faithful walking stick was rested along the front of the
bench, and regularly became a handy pointer for extra emphasis.
The thin
chalk line - birth to death
Inevitably early in his lecture Prof would
draw a long thin line in chalk, right across the length of the very worn
blackboard. This represented the
surface of the ground.
Then the story would begin –told with the
passion that only Welsh speakers can put into the English language. In no time he had us captivated as the
story would start to build – always from left to right on the board.
The ‘seeede’
On the far left, the chalk made a tiny
speck on the board just below the line, and then with a few more tiny circles a
‘seede’ would appear, nicely covered by enough soil to give it protection and
keep it moist. Never ‘too deeepe’!
With a bit more chalk work it would fatten,
and suddenly a ‘shoote’ would burst from it and fight its way upwards to the
surface. Then with more chalk
work, from the seed’s base, a tiny ‘roote’ - a ‘seminal roote’ appeared to
fight its way down. Why did the
shoots know to go up and the roots to go down?
Then we remembered in those dry pure botany
lectures, all that stuff we got the clever chemistry involved in why shoots go
up and roots go down. It was
useful after all.
So now from Prof’s lectures we appreciated
that if you got the seed depth wrong when setting the drill and the subsequent
harrowing, you could cause serious trauma to this germ of life – and cost to the
farmer (your employer). You may
not be there long!
The ‘shoote’
Then with his dark Welsh eyes sparkling, as
we sat there we saw the shoot start to make its hazardous journey up above the
chalk line breaking through the surface to life support from the sun. We felt
like shouting ‘Halleluiah’.
Things were moving fast now, as the shoot
started to ‘tillller’ – with more young shoots starting to emerge out of the plant’s
vitally important ‘growing point’ just above the ground surface. This was a sacred part of the plant and
must never be damaged – we got that message in no uncertain terms!
Prof’s excitement gained momentum as his
chalk produced more shoots (tillers) and more roots – and more roots and more
shoots. He was in full flight
until suddenly - Silence! You
could hear a seed drop. He had our
total concentration - we were all hooked.
What on earth could have happened of such
momentum to this chalky grass plant growing along our well-worn blackboard, to bring
our normally relaxed mob to total silence?
With his back partly hiding his hand doing
a bit more secret chalk work – there it was. The first ‘seeede head’ – the grass flower. We all cheered!
Prof’s chalky masterful hand produced more
and more seed heads on the plant which ‘greewe’ quickly – even in a matter of
days when light, temperature and nutrients were all in line.
We animal men all knew that sex had few
downsides apart from a few disease risks, and you could never get enough of it,
and he cunningly led us to believe that sex was what the plant wanted too. We
were all very keen to support the idea.
But then our blackboard plant with its massive
seed heads started to look tired and stopped growing! Maybe there was a lesson here that too much sex could have it’s
problems. So as more flowering
heads appeared with their mass of developing seeds, the plant leaves started to
droop, get narrow and fall over. Then
some of the seed started to drop out.
So now our great grass plant full of vigour
in its youth was on death row!
With Welsh passion in his voice – he almost had us all in tears. After sex you could die – and if
conditions were right – you could die fast! We could imagine a little white cross as the last drawing on
the line.
But
there was salvation!
Indeed there was salvation for our chalky blackboard
grass plant. With more sparkle
back in his eyes and bending slightly forward while eyeballing everyone one in
the room Prof asked in his rising Welsh tones –“So what happens then’? We were all on tenterhooks.
With a wide sweep of his arm and a slowly
closing fist, Prof hit the blackboard just before those sexy seed heads had
appeared and grabbed at the lush and leafy chalky plant and decreed – ‘the
cattle beast takes it all’!
Then with his duster he wiped the top of
the chalky plants and we thought he’d ruined his masterpiece and all the work
that went into it.
Like a final blessing in a Welsh Chapel he
thundered - ‘Always aim to keep the plant in the leafy vegetative stage’– and
in almost a whisper he continued - ‘by good grazing management’. His Gospel continued with - ‘The
grass plant feeds the animal, and the animal keeps the plant to keeps it its
vegetative stage’.
The other key part of this great grassland Gospel
was that no matter what grass varieties you sowed, if you didn’t get the animal
defoliation business right, you’d end up with a mess of unproductive grasses,
no clover and weeds. (See Deric Charlton’s notes).
The LEEEKE
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| Champion pot leeks at Bellingham Leek Show |
Prof came in, and to our utter dismay and great
disappointment completely ignored it.
We were starting to feel a bit peeved, and accepted that our smart-ass
move had flopped. We knew
that these things happen of course, with lecturers who have their good and bad
days!
The thin chalk line got its usual workout,
and it was getting near the end of the lecture when most of us had entered that
twilight zone of concentration, brought on by lecturers repeating their message
for at least the third time. We
drifted on to the importance of nutrient storage and feeding value, and how to
make sure the nutrients were used for the stock and not wasted to produce seed.
Prof was chalking away on the topic,
watching our reactions at the same time - and then suddenly he stopped. Silence! Prof picked up his Homburg hat grabbed his walking stick and
headed for the door. Our clicking
ring binders celebrated the end of proceedings - but to our dismay - he had
stopped dead in his tracks.
He spun around, eyes sparkling, moustache
bristling and in a crouched pose, with stick at the ready as a pointer and grin
as wide as the Tyne - he hollered in his great Welsh accent - ‘LIKE THE FOOD
STORE IN THIS LEEEKE’ !
He bolted shaking with laughter to our roar
that would have done a Jackie Charlton header proud. Full time score that day: Martin Jones 1 – Students Nil!
Panic!
It was at the end of so many of Prof’s lectures
that I used to panic – I hadn’t written anything down! The standard routine in lectures was from
when the lecturer first opened his or her mouth, to when they thankfully left
the room at the end, it was wise to write down every word they uttered. You dare not sit back and listen, hoping
for a clear message to regurgitate back to them in exams.
Most times there was no clear message!
In Ag economics lectures I found that when
I finally faced the agony of reading the scribbles of my Parker 51 fountain pen
before an exam, the notes went around in a complete confusing circle, as those
from the last lecture seemed to be a repeat of those from the first! It all seemed ‘common sense made
difficult’ – a good definition of economics at the best of times, but it was essential
to regurgitate in exams what you got in the lectures if you wanted to pass.
With Prof MJ, all that most of us had to
show for his hour’s lecture was a line across our books with little drawings on
it. But really you didn’t need
notes – it was all there from his skill or an orator, turning words delivered
with passion into images, which most brains can recall better than text.
My future
salvation - Prof’s chalk line.
Sixty plus years later as a Scientific
Liaison Officer at the Ruakura Research Centre in New Zealand we received many VIP
overseas visitors, who had come to New Zealand to see how we produce and manage
pastures. They wanted to find out
how to keep costs down for their farmers to stay in business - to crack the
secrets and dark arts of Kiwi pasture management.
Then later in the 7 years I taught pasture
management to young farm Polytech students, most of whom were full time on the
farm, only coming to class one day a week – I had really needed some tricks.
These part-time students were always tired
as they worked awful hours, and from their school background they were not
great note takers. I could get them to draw pictures and use mind maps where
writing was at a minimum. The
challenge was to make the science behind the practice of farming interesting
and relevant – to explain the Why behind the What.
Prof MJ’s thin chalk line said it all. After all those years I could remember
every detail, and I unashamedly used all the tricks of the great man, to get
the basic message across so they went back to milk at least motivated to want
to learn more. The details of
strip grazing and rotational grazing, feed allocation and feed budgeting were
not the main issue – the basic principles were.
It was getting these students to
appreciate, value and marvel at ‘the green stuff’ the cows ate and dunged
on. I used Prof’s thin chalk line
(now with a whiteboard marker) to get them to remember (and never forget) how a
grass plant started life, how it lived and died – and how important this was to
their farm income and the economic benefit of every New Zealander. It’s a pity that most politicians both
then and now had no idea what all this was about.
New
Zealand pasture knowledge for export
In recent years there have been many more
overseas farmers and executives from dairy companies coming to New Zealand to
learn about our pasture management, as their high cost systems based on grain
feeding are now starting to hurt their profits.
They have suddenly realised that pastures
can be much more than summer exercise areas for their monstrous grain-devouring
North American Holstein Friesian cows, which have swept throughout the world.
Pasture management is not an easy subject
to teach, as when you visit successful New Zealand farmers and hear them talk
about what they do to achieve top results, it sounds to be more art than
science. So much of it is about
timing of doing things like moving fences and moving stock.
Question
There’s a question of – ‘what’s the
difference between a good Kiwi farmer and a poor one’? The answer is – ‘about a week’! This is because the grass plant as a feed
source varies every day of it’s life in both quantity and quality, and even
over different parts of the day.
Lost in translation
Teaching pasture management through a
translator is always a frustrating and worrying business, as you never quite
know if your message was clear. Prof
MJ’s chalk line always saved my day an at times I found myself slipping into
bits of passionate Welsh if I was concerned about the translation accuracy! I loved walking around the class sneaking a look at visitors’
notes and seeing Prof’s thin chalk line being annotated in Chinese, Japanese, Korean
and Spanish. I wish he could have
seen it all – I certainly felt his presence.
My 1953 Ag Botany my lecture notes from
Kings had long gone – but I didn’t need them. Because of the skill of Prof Martin Jones as an
inspirational teacher, it was all there as a picture in my old brain.
There’s a well-recognised principle of
communication about what makes a message memorable? It’s not the content of the message but the passion with
which it is delivered. Was there
any better proof of that principle than the lectures of Professor Martin
Jones? He deserved a Knighthood
for his dedication to agronomy and to his many students.
End
