204 By-Products of the Forest 



living by gathering this gum in the spruce woods 

 of New York and New England. Their work is 

 known as "gumming." 



This gum is really the blood of the tree. It is 

 seldom found on perfectly healthy trees, but 

 often on those that have been attacked by in- 

 sects or injured in other ways. When a limb has 

 been broken from the tree, or the bark cut or 

 filled with the burrows of insects, Nature in her 

 own way repairs the damage quickly and well. 

 The holes are filled with a thick, sticky fluid. 

 At first this is pitchy and white in color. In the 

 cold of the first winter it becomes darker, and 

 hardens into many odd shapes. 



Gum pickers spend much of their time in the 

 spring months in scarring the trees. They climb 

 a good-sized tree to far above the old branches. 

 There, in the warm sunlight, a V-shaped scar is 

 made on the south side of the trunk. The tree 

 is plainly marked near the ground on leaving, 

 and the picker is paid for his labor by the gum he 

 finds a year or two later. 



By that time it is dark red and very hard. 

 Then it is really gum, and these men cut it from 

 the trees with knives. Once in a great while one 



