.crop equals 10,000 cups), or 17 percent of the total 

 working crops. Approximately 78 percent of the 

 crops were on leased timber, as compared with the 

 73-percent average for the South. Still operators, 

 or processors, during the 1 933-34 season, worked an 

 average of 11.2 crops, from which 479 naval stores 

 units were produced, an average yield per crop of 

 43 units. 



Production during 1933-34 amounted to 81,610 

 naval stores units — more than 60 percent of the 

 Florida and about 16 percent of the total United 

 States production of gum naval stores. About 20 

 of the larger stills accounted for a third of the pro- 

 duction (fig. 5). 



Gum Naval Stores Resources 



The activities of the gum naval stores industry 

 in the forests are limited by the distribution and 

 frequency of occurrence of longleaf and slash pines. 

 The collection of gum is not economically feasible 

 where the turpentine pines are widely scattered 

 and infrequent over large tracts. In classifying 

 the forest area as to its turpentining possibilities, 



the area immediately surrounding each sample 

 plot was taken into consideration. Clear-cut areas, 

 reproduction areas, and nonturpentine pine and 

 hardwood types intermingling with areas suitable 

 for turpentining are therefore included in a gross 

 turpentine-area figure — typifying the heterogene- 

 ous area over which an active turpentining opera- 

 tion is spread. The largest acreage not adapted 

 to turpentining is in the hardwood and cypress 

 types and in the nonturpentine pine types in the 

 northwestern and south-central portions of north- 

 eastern Florida. Altogether, slightly more than 

 2 million acres of the forest land was classified as 

 unsuited for turpentining (table 6). The rela- 

 tively rapid development and spread of second- 

 growth slash pine (fig. 6) is indicated by the fact 

 that 55 percent of the working and resting trees 

 were of this species. 



The gross area classified as the field for con- 

 tinuing turpentine operations is more than 5 

 million acres. Over 84 percent of the turpentine 

 acreage is in the flatwoods and rolling uplands, 

 and the remainder is in swamps, bays, ponds, 

 branch heads, and river bottoms. Seldom will an 



Figure 6. — Chipping and dipping in a slash pine stand, Bradford County, Fla. 



19 



