THE NAVAL STORE INDUSTJIY IN NORTH CAROLINA. 



93 



AREA OF ORCHARDS REDUCED BY I.UMBERING. 



Lumbermen are also instrumental to a considerable extent in 

 reducing the acreag'e of turpentine orchards. In Moore, Rich- 

 mond and Robeson counties they are rapidly cutting into the 

 orchards. Eleven distillers in the two first counties reported their 

 orchards as having been cut into by lumbermen last year, 

 least 35,000 acres of new and abandoned orchard must have been 

 cut over during 1893 to have yielded the lumber cut during that 

 year by the mills sawing long-leaf pine. 



HOW LONG CAN OUR TURPENTINE ORCHARDS LAST? 



It appears from the foregoing that there are in the State less 

 than 75,000 acres of long-leaf pine timber now unboxed which can 

 be added in the future to the turpentine orchards, and that the 

 present yield of turpentine is derived principally from "back- 

 boxed" trees, which if not destroyed within twenty years could 

 not continue to yield turpentine for more than that length of time. 

 In point of fact, however, the trees of existing orchards cannot 

 produce turpentine, except in a small way, for even that length of 

 time, since they are being destroyed by fire, or converted into lum- 

 ber, at the rate of over 60,000 acres a year. Then, too, the rate of 

 destruction increases each year as the number of mills increases, 

 and as the amount of abandoned orchard, which proper precau- 

 tions are not taken to protect from fire, becomes larger; and these 

 abandoned orchards serve as means of carrying fire to the newer 

 orchards which are being used. 



FRENCH AND AMERICAN METHODS OF GATHERING TURPENTINE. 



The two chief objections to the American system of boxing trees 

 for turpentine are: 



(1) . The injury to the tree produced by the box, interrupting and 

 impairing the life processes and sooner or later damaging the tim- 

 ber or causing its pntire destruction, and, 



(2) . That the yield of spirits of turpentine is less than it should be, 

 and the rosin manufactured is largely of darker and inferior grades. 



A method of tapping the trees, which to a ver}^ great extent 



