MANUAL OP THE NTLAOriM DiSTKICT. 565 



regards the growth of the shoots, but the vakio of the bark of such CH. XXX. 

 growth, compared with that of an original phxnt, has yet to be „ "^ 

 satisfactorily ascertained. Culture. 



The stripping is ordinarily known as the mousing process, 

 though the application of moss, or other vegetable substance 

 suited to exclude the light and protect the wound, is not abso- 

 lutely essential to the renewal of the bark. The process is thus 

 described by Mr. Mclvor {vide report of the Commissioner of the 

 Nilagiris, August 1875): — 



Description of the process of Mossing. — " A labourer {iroceeds to an 

 eight-year-old tree, and, reaching up as far as he can, makes a hori- 

 zontal incision of the required width. From either end of this incision 

 he runs a vertical incision to the ground, and then, carefully raising 

 with his knife the bark at the horizontal incision until he can seize it 

 with his fingers, he strips off the bark to the ground and cuts it off. 

 The strip of bark then presents the appearance of a ribbon more or less 

 long. Supposing the tree to be of 28 inches in circumference, the 

 labourer will take nine of the above ribbons, each \\ inches wide. He 

 will thus leave, after the tree has been stripped, other nine ribbons 

 still adhering to the tree, each somewhat broader than the stripped 

 ribbon and at intervals apart, occupied by the spaces to which the 

 stripped ribbons had adhered. As soon as he has removed his strips, 

 the labourer will proceed to moss the trunk all round, tying on the 

 moss with some fibre. The decorticated intervals will thus be excluded 

 from light and air, and this point is one of the capital points in 

 the system. The mere exclusion of light and air from a stem partially 

 bared of bark acts in two ways : it enables a healing process to be 

 rapidly set up in the same way as a plaster does in the case of a wound 

 in an animal organism : and it has this further curious effect, it 

 increases the secretion of quinine in the bark renewed under its 

 protection. This increase of quinine is admitted by Mr. Broughton in 

 all his reports. At the end of six or twelve mouths the bands of bark 

 left untouched at the first stripping are removed, and the intervals 

 they occupied on the trunk are mossed. At the end of twenty-two 

 months, on an average, the spaces occupied by the ribbons originally 

 taken are found to be covered with renewed bark much thicker than 

 the natural bark of the same age, and this renewed bark can be removed 

 and a fresh pi'ocess of renewal again be fostered by moss. In 

 another six or twelve months the renewed bark of the natural ribbons 

 left at the first stripping can be taken, and so on ; harvests are obtain- 

 able from the trunk, alternately from the spaces left at the. first 

 stripping and the spaces left by the second stripping. Experience 

 hitherto does not show any limit to the taking of these harvests from 

 a tree. Of course it is understood that at every stripping the ribbons 

 taken are longer than at the preceding stripping, because the tree 

 eacli year increased in height and bulk, and, therefore, the top of 

 every ribbon consists of natural bark and the lower part of renewed 

 bark.'' 



