94 RESINOUS PRODUCTS. 



kind of pannier, holding about four and a-half gallons, called an escouarte 

 which, when full, is conveyed to reservoirs formed of wood or brick let 

 into the ground and dispersed through the forest. The solidified resin 

 adhering to the sides of the groove, locally called barms, is either mixed 

 with the crude resin or packed separately in palm-leaf baskets. The 

 resin is ladled from the reservoirs into casks and conveyed to the factories 

 to l^e converted into oil of turpentine and colophony.* 



American method. During the winter a receptacle called a " box " is cut 

 into the trunk of the trees intended to be tapped, at about a foot from the 

 ground ; the incision is made transversely across the stem and obliquely 

 inwards, the length being twelve to fourteen inches, the breadth six to seven 

 inches, and the depth about as much. A circular space about two and 

 a-half feet broad is then cleared around the trees and in it is placed a 

 series of heaps or layers of all the inflammable material scattered around 

 which on the first dry day in early spring is set on fire, the object 

 being to clear the ground of all inflammable matter from which the 

 outbreak of a forest fire might originate during the dry season when the 

 collecting of the resin is most active. Nevertheless this very precaution 

 is often the cause of forest fires that spread for miles, involving the 

 irreparable destruction of hundreds both of young trees and of trees in 

 their best period of development. 



In the early spring, when the sap begins to move, the process of 

 collecting the crude resin is commenced by an incision being made by an 

 axe in the bark about eight inches long and two inches broad above the 

 "box" and perpendicular 'to the upper edge on each side at the angles, 

 a process called "cornering," and the bark in the interspace is stripped 

 off from the sap-wood by an instrument made especially for the. purpose. 

 Every week an addional portion or "chipping" is removed, so that the 

 surface of the sap-wood laid bare is constantly enlarged. This "chipping" 

 is continued from the middle of April to the middle of October and even 

 into November when the weather is favourable. The " boxes " as they 

 become filled with the exuding resin are emptied with an iron ladle and 

 the resin is conveyed to depots. With the commencement of the cold 

 season, the flow of turpentine ceases and the "boxes" as well as the 

 spaces above them that have been stripped of bark are freed of the resin 

 adhering to them called " scrapes " that had become hardened in contact 

 with the air. This resin, is, however, of little value on account of the 

 impurities with which it is mixed. 



The injury done to the trees consists not so much in the withdrawal 

 of the resin itself, as in the unskilful manner in which it is obtained. 

 The large wound is soon covered with fungi and all sorts of putrifying 

 agents which spread rapidly through the trees; they are thus destroyed, 

 or as good as destroyed, even when they escape the greatest of all the 

 scourges of American forests the forest fires, f 



* " Le Pin maritime," par Raymond Brunei, Bibliotheque du Cultivateur. 



t Dr. Heinrich Mayr, " Waldimgen von Nordamerika, " pp. 53, 54. "Of Ihe ex- 

 travagant methods which prevail in the United States, none certainly exceed in 

 extravagance that under which the turpentine industry is conducted and there is no 

 business connected with the products of the soil which yield so little return in pro- 

 portion to the destruction of the material involved. The forests of Georgia once represented 

 fabulous wealth ; they were not surpassed by those of any other region, and could they 

 have been wisely husbanded, would have made Georgia one of the richest States in the 

 Union. The turpentine farmers take everything they see, and once the resinous surface 

 of the tree is exposed, the lire is almost certain to finish the damage the axe has 

 .commenced." Garden and Forest, Vol. IV. (1891) p. 49. 



