6 APPEARANCE PRESENTED BY PLANTATIONS. 



now afforded excellent shelter to the pine plants, which were but 

 4:-inch striplings, and under their fostering protection the pines grew 

 and flourished.^ until at length, with an ingratitude not unhappily 

 confined to the vegetable world, they suffocated their infantine 

 pi'otectors, and rose high, defiant of the raging sand-storms. 



" So effective was M. Bremontier's process that, in 1871, a com- 

 mission, appointed by Government to examine the Landes, reported 

 that 12,500 acres were covered with thriving and profitable pines; 

 and the Landais, who had lived to see their howling wastes clothed 

 with far-stretching forests, were enabled to gain a livelihood, less 

 precarious and perilous than that obtained by fishing in the stormy 

 waters of the Biscay Bay. 



" Twenty-five years passed, and then the hand of man was busy 

 among the pines. Good as the pinaster is for domestic purposes. La 

 Fontaine says : 



' Sera-t-il Dieu, table, ou cuvette ? 

 it is far more valuable for the great quantity of resin, tar, and lamp- 

 black which it produces. As you ride thi'ough the pines you will 

 meet the resin-gatherers, resiniers, as they are called, who during the 

 summer months live in the forest ; for the most part a rude set of 

 men, speaking a strange j^cttois, from which, however, you may glean 

 some information. When the resin-harvest is at hand, the resinier 

 goes forth provided with a short ladder and a curved axe. His 

 manner of testing the fitness of a tree to be tapped is by throwing 

 his arms around it. If the trunk be so thick that he cannot see his 

 finger ends, the pine is ripe for the operation. This is performed 

 with great quickness and dexterity. A longitudinal cut or groove is 

 made in the trunk, down which the resin flows, and is caught at the 

 bottom of the stem, in a little trough fashioned in a few moments 

 from the bark removed by the cut. Weekly the wound is re-opened 

 but not widened, and the operation is renewed yearly, until the 

 entire trunk is scored in such a manner as to make you wonder how 

 the maimed bole can support the superincumbent weight. But, 

 stranger still, the pine is not injured by this scoring process ; for, if 

 the operation be judiciously performed, by the time that the resinier 

 has gone round the tree, the first wound has healed, and the trunk is 

 ready to be bled again. Wonderful too is the quantity of resin which 

 exudes from these bountiful trees. You may know where the 

 resiniers have lately been, by the palsamic odour proceeding from 

 the wounded pine. A resin-gatherer told me that after a season's 

 practice — from the first of May to the end of September — a good 



