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241 
beforehand, but merely scrape up a handful when they require 
it at the side of a gapo, which is often of little consistence, so 
that a large quantity is required to fasten the cups. This class 
od of working. The quantity of milk that flows from each 
cut varies, but if the tree is large, and has not been much 
tapped, the majority of the cups will be more than half full, 
and occasionally a few may be Pilled to the brim. But if the 
tree is much g sidie from tapping, whether it grows in the ric 
siudge of the | gapo or dry land, many of the cups will be found 
to contain only about a tablespoonful of milk, and sometimes 
onion then "bafi as high a speres and didi a as 
t nd rface of the gro 
and in the course of working the upper row grins Bac dic daily 
six or eight inches, while the lower one ascen 
distance, both rows in a few days come together. When the 
produce of milk diminishes in long-wrought trees, two or three 
cups are put on various parts of the trunk where the bark is 
thickest. Although many of the trees of this class are large, the 
quantity of milk ahtedined is vind dari ee This state of 
things is not the result of overtapping, as some have stated. 
Indeed, I do not believe it possible to aaa a tree of in the 
operation the wood is not left bare or injured. But at every 
stroke the collector’s axe enters the wood, and the energies of 
erous st redii ue ree I exa d h 
the marks of twelve rows of c hich had already been put 
on this seaso e rows were adr six inches apart, and in 
each row trunci were six cups, so that the total number of wood cuts 
hippie the space of three months amounted to 72. It grew close 
a ga po, only i inches above high-tide mark, and being a 
vinohous tree the cups were usually well fill ed, but with 
two years or so of such treatment the tree would probably be 
the milk is better in the dry season than during the rains. 
Such is the case with some vegetable products, but as regards 
i ink 
opinion that thena — quantity of erue flows from the tree. 
No doubt the dry season is the most — for caoutchouc 
collecting, although, whether a plantation is formed with 
2 house, convenient tapping sisi, certainly be always 
carrie when the weather is fine . . . . There are two 
ro sinbtbsbtla adopted in tapping, which are chiefly confined to 
he Upper Amazon and tributaries. Both are exactly on the same 
