45 
Part I] Lindsay and Harlow : Lac and Shellac 
will be kept anyhow, in the first place that comes handy, and never 
touched until a possible purchaser arrives, or until a convenient bazaar 
day occurs, Heat generates, fermentation sets in, and the result is 
an evil-smelling mass of lac, wood and foetid animal remains, which 
eventually sets into a solid lump known as “ blocky ” lac. Blocky 
lac is the bugbear of the manufacturer. Not only is it difficult to 
crush and to separate the wood and fibre, but the fermentation of the 
organic matter makes the dye extremely difficult to wash out, the lac 
itself difficult to melt and the addition of rosin (colophony) a neces¬ 
sity to reduce the melting point. The better class manufacturers 
will not touch such lac and it is usually purchased at a discount by 
the makers of TN and lower class shellacs. 
The collection of lac cultivated on a large scale presents no easy 
problem, especially if the method recommended in Chapter V is fol¬ 
lowed. Such cultivation is nearly always in forests, where labour is 
more or less difficult to get. It is a fact that most of the lac-growing 
areas are in kharif country, where the field crops ripen in the autumn, 
comparatively little being grown in rabi areas, where spring crops 
are cultivated. The larger growers of lac, particularly the Damoh 
Government Forests and the Esociet, have tried to arrange their 
work so as not to compete for labour with field cultivation. This is 
the reason why they use the Baisakhi crop primarily for brood 
and the Katki for the market, despite the fact that there is some 
reason to believe that Baisakhi lac is of better quality than Katki. If 
therefore, as has been already suggested, both crops are to be com¬ 
mercial crops, some special arrangements will have to be made. 
The following method is suggested for areas where labour is, as 
it usually is, particularly difficult to get at the beginning of the 
rains. The proposal is to use both crops as commercial crops, but 
to use the Katki and not the Baisakhi as the principal brood crop. 
As soon as the Baisakhi crop matures, that is to say reaches its maxi¬ 
mum bulk, as much of it as possible will be collected for the market, 
leaving as a minimum sufficient only to inoculate the trees in the 
coupes reserved for the summer brood. The lac used to inoculate 
these trees will eventually be collected phunki . When, in due 
course, the Katki crop matures, only such lac as is required for 
brood purposes will be collected before the emergence of the larvae; 
the balance will be left on the trees and will be collected phunki after 
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