116 Journal of the Mitchell Society. [Nov. 



resin which exudes during the spring and summer months 

 from the freshly scarified trunk above. 



In the cutting of the ik box" or "boxes'' in the base of the 

 tree its trunk is partly severed and in storms splits off at the 

 top of the box, breaking usually three or four feet higher. 



Again, the turpentine belt is characterized by a complete 

 ground covering of ' k wire grass" whose exposed blades die 

 during winter and are annually burned off in the early spring 

 months to furnish better grazing for cattle. So long as tur- 

 pentine operations are active, these ground fires do not dam- 

 age the trees, for during the winter the laborers remove with 

 hoes all wire grass and fallen straw a safe distance from each 

 tree; but when the forest is abandoned, this precaution is 

 no longer taken and with the next fire the resin which has 

 gradually accumulated in the old "box" takes fire, the heat 

 melts the resin on the scarified surface above which, flowing 

 into the box, adds fuel to the flames until the tree falls; or if 

 the case is not so extreme, until the tree is weakened to such 

 an extent that it can no longer resist the attacks of injurious 

 insects which soon kill it. 



The evident loss from this factor was so much greater than 

 from imperfections in the method ol distillation that common 

 sense prompted that immediate efforts be diverted from the 

 matter of distillation to that of a practical device for collect- 

 ing the resin which would render unnecessary the cutting of 

 the "box 1 '. Many evidences were found of unsuccessful efforts 

 to introduce a form of a cup system, some of these being iden- 

 tical with the cup system used in the turpentine forests of 

 France since 1860. But none had found any permanent place 

 in the industry. 



With a simple apparatus somewhat like the French, con- 

 sisting of a cup and two metallic troughs, preliminary experi- 

 ments were begun during the summer vacation of 1901 at 

 Statesboro, Ga. The metallic troughs or gutters, consisting 

 of two inch strips of sheet galvanized iron, bent along the 

 middle to form a trough, are inserted in inclined shallow cuts 



