44 THE WORK OF THE FOREST DEPARTMENT IN INDIA. 



prepared strip to a depth of about ^" to f ", thus severing the 

 resin ducts and channels in the wood and causing the liberated 

 resin to flow down the cut surface over the guiding galvanised 

 lip into the cup below. These severed channels clog after a 

 while, and the whole art of the tapping lies in refreshening 

 the blaze at fixed intervals, gradually extending it up- 

 wards, till at the end of the seven or eight months embraced in 

 the tapping season the blaze should be about 24" long and the 

 •coolie in charge of the section of 1,000 blazes should have deliv- 

 -ered 45 to 55 maunds net (say 2 tons) of resin in his depot. 



Work goes on in this way for five years, the lip and cup being 

 raised annually with the increase in height of the blaze, so as to 

 reduce the distance the resin has to flow before reaching the cup, 

 as the resin oxidises (and deteriorates commercially) very 

 rapidly in contact with air. In the 5th year of tapping the 

 •coolie has to be furnished with a light ladder to reach his work. 

 After five years the blaze is left alone and a fresh one is 

 started, and so the tree continues yielding resin uninterruptedly 

 for some 60 years out of its normal life of a century and a 

 ■quarter. Trees under 3' girth are not tapped and above this 

 •girth the number of blazes varies with the size of the tree. 

 Those trees destined to be felled within five years of the time of 

 starting tapping are specially heavily worked for their resin, 

 A mort, to quote the French expression. With this necessarily 

 ^rief account the forest operations connected with the harvest- 

 ing of the resin have to be left and the factory processes and the 

 markets taken up in review. The cost of the resin delivered 

 at the factory site varies from Rs. 2-4-0 to Rs. 3-4-0 per 

 maund net. 



It was in the factories and in the selection and devising 

 of manufacturing methods best suited for the distillation of the 

 Indian pine resin that the Forest Department found its hard^t 

 task, a task in which the Forest Research Institute at Dehra 

 Dun and the Imperial Institute, London, gave much helpful 

 advice and assistance. America, thanks to the happy chemical 

 ■constitution of its principal pine-resin, produces a turpentine 

 which stands in a class by itself, though manufactured in the 

 most primitive, direct fire-heat apparatus. French manufac- 

 turers found, but not till they had learnt by bitter and costlv 



