94 



FORESTS, FOREST LANDS AND FOREST PRODUCTS. 



remedies these faults, is the Hugues system, which was first used 

 in France about 1860, and since that time has come into general 

 use in that country, having been found more efficacious than the 

 one previously used there. It presents as great an advancement 

 on the American system now in vogue as the American did on the 

 early French method. 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF GATHERING TURPENTINE. 



The American method, which can be advantageously used only 

 on stocks over fifteen inches in diameter, consists of cutting in the 

 base of the tree, about eight inches from the ground, a hole called 

 the box. This box, which is hollowed out with a narrow, thin- 

 bladed axe manufactured for the purpose, has a length following 

 the circumference of the tree of about fourteen inches {d to e of 

 Plate II), a depth of about seven inches (6 to /), and extends 

 back into the wood at the mouth of the box about four inches 

 {b to c), or at the bottom of the box (/) about five inches. At the 

 same time that the box is cut there is a triangular strip removed 

 on either side of it and extending up as high as the tip of the box- 

 This operation is called cornering and the channels left where the 

 chips were removed act as gutters leading into the box. 



Immediately above this box the thin bark and a thin section of 

 the sap-wood is removed by means of a sharp, bent-bladed imple- 

 ment called the hack. In this process, called hacking or chipping^ the 

 implement is drawn at an oblique angle across the surface of the 

 trunk alternately in opposite directions, each pair of grooves made 

 by the hack forming a V, so that the cut surface consists of two 

 planes forming a very obtuse angle, the lines of their union run- 

 ning vertically up the tree above the center of the box, and down 

 which line the resin runs into the box. This scarified surface, 

 called the /ace, has a breadth of from fourteen to sixteen inches and 

 a depth usually of one and one-half to two inches, rarely going in 

 as deep as the thickness of the sap-wood. 



The boxes are cut late in fall or early in spring, and in the 

 first part of March chipping is begun, and is repeated about 

 once a week for from thirty to thirty-five weeks, according to the 



