416 THE UNIVERSE. 



It is this secretion that gives to the coniferous woods such 

 power of endurance ; the more it abounds in their resinous 

 ducts, the greater lapse of ages can they endure. The 

 wood of the Canary Islands pine (Pinus Canariensis) is 

 quite impregnated with it, and is therefore almost imperish- 

 able. The ancient dwellings in Teneriffe, which were en- 

 tirely built of this wood more than four centuries and a half 

 ago, when the island was conquered, are quite as fresh as 

 when they were built. The resin still exudes from all their 

 beams during the heat of summer. 



Some plants, instead of distilling their resinous products 

 drop by drop, form a gaseous vapor, and this clings so close 

 around the plant that if, during the twilight of a still, burn- 

 ing hot summer day, we approach it with a lighted candle, 

 the vapor takes fire, and produces a bright light, which 

 envelops all the foliage, sparkling like the lycopodium 



to thirty years. In order to obtain it, workmen, called resin-gatherers, remove 

 with an axe the coarse bark from the lower part of the trunk, over a surface 

 about a foot wide and a foot and a half high. On this surface they afterwards 

 excavate with a small hatchet, the head of which is shaped like a gouge, a still 

 deeper cutting, which lays bare the most superficial of the woody zones, for it is 

 between these and the bark that the resin flows ; this last incision is about six 

 inches hi<di and four wide. Each week the resin-gatherer renews the surface by 

 paring off above a thin slip, so small that the excavation in the course of a single 

 season does not extend beyond eighteen inches in height. These cuttings are 

 prolonged through a series of years, till they reach a height of twelve or fourteen 

 feet, when the workmen recommence at the foot of the tree, and cut others along- 

 side of and parallel to them. In the landes of Bordeaux the resin is generally 

 received in little cups, which they suspend beneath the cuttings, and into which 

 little spouts conduct the sap. 



This industry has had a great development in some of the Southern United 

 States, particularly in North and South Carolina and Georgia, where the south- 

 ern pine, a tree rich in resinous products, is very abundant. 



