232 AUSTRALIAN NATIVE PLANTS. 
As usually found in commerce, it is in very small pieces 
(almost powder), or else these small pieces are aggregated, form- 
ing a friable mass. In this state it is more or less impure, being 
mixed with soil, and fragments of the yellowish bases of the leaves. 
After a bush fire has passed over grass trees the heat causes the resin 
to run into more or less spherical masses (the author has some in 
his possession as spherical as if turned in a lathe), and these 
masses can be picked out either from the interior of the charred 
stump or from the ground at the place where a grass-tree once 
grew. Such masses present the resin in a very pure form, but 
collecting in this way would entail too much labour to be profitable 
commercially—the ordinary method being to break up the grass- 
tree stumps, and subject the fragments to rough winnowing and 
washing. 
The resin (‘Grass-tree Gum”’ it is invariably called) has a 
very small demand, the ordinary retail price being from fourpence 
to sixpence a pound in Sydney, and the wholesale price, of course, 
much less. It is chiefly used as a colouring for varnishes, and is 
used by European and Chinese workmen (chiefly the latter) to 
stain wood in imitation of cedar, and also by inferior French- 
polishers. It has been observed above that abundance of picric 
acid, a very powerful yellow dye, can be prepared from it. But 
this substance can be so cheaply made from coal-tar that the 
resin is not now thought of for the purpose. The result is that 
many storekeepers in the colonies, who eagerly bought up grass- 
tree gum with the view to exporting it to England, have for years 
past had stocks on hand, and quantities now sold have frequently 
been gathered, say—fifteen or twenty years. 
The following is the usual method adopted for collecting 
grass-tree gum in Australia—the articles required are an axe, a 
flail, a sieve, and a sheet. The stems of the grass-trees are 
hacked down, broken into convenient pieces, and allowed to fall 
into the sheet. A stout stick or flail completes the work of disin- 
tegration. The substance is then passed through the sieve, the 
ligneous portions of the grass-tree for the most part failing to pass 
through its meshes. A gentle breeze is sufficient to winnow what 
has passed through the sieve, in order to render it ready for the 
