KESIN-TAPPING. 633 



become a regular industr}'. In France, at any rate, their wood 

 is too valuable to be exposed to the damage which the operation 

 causes. However, as the silver-fir, spruce, larch, black pine 

 and Aleppo-pine are sometimes tapped, it is useful to know 

 how this is done. The Scotch, mountain and Cembran pines 

 are not tapped. 



The principal world-supply * of oleo-resin comes from the 

 swamp or long-leaf pine {Piniis jxilustris), also from the loblolly 

 pine (P. Tceda) and the pitch-pine (P. atistralis) of the North 

 American States, North and South Carolina, Georgia and 

 Alabama. Dr. Mohr states that 2,0U0,000 acres of these pines 

 were being worked for resin in 1890, and that about 500,000 

 acres of new forest were taken up annually. In five or six years 

 after these forests have been invaded, they present a picture of 

 ruin and desolation painful to behold, the seedlings and poles 

 being burned and all hope for the restoration of the forests 

 excluded. 



In India, resin-tapping has been introduced by Government 

 agency in certain forests of Pinus lonfjifoUa in Jaunsar in the 

 N.W. Provinces, and is practised on a careful plan based on that 

 employed in Gascony. Resin may also be obtained in India 

 from Pinus cxcelsa and P. Khasya. 



Section II. — Supply of Resin from the Maritime Pine 



IN THE LaNDES of GaSCONY. 



1. Mode of Tapping. 



The maritime pine contains very large and numerous resin- 

 ducts, and the flow of resin being much more active in the sap- 

 wood than the heartwood, superficial cuts into the former, which 

 pass through these canals, cause the resin to flow into receptacles 

 placed to receive it. 



Towards the end of February or the beginning of March, in 

 order to prevent pieces of the coarse external bark from mingling 

 with the resin, the rough bark or rhytidome of the maritime 

 pine is trimmed oft' as a preparatory measure, so that only a few 



* Extract from Report of Chief of the Forestry Division, U. S., "Washincrton, 

 1892. 



