Balata and the Balata Industry. 171 
their rice, are too made of this wood. The demand for 
bullet wood is very small at present ; none is exported, 
and the requirements of estates are very limited. It 
varies in price, according to its size, from 25 cents to $1 
a cubic foot. The largest trees of all, the giants of the 
forest, are not cut for timber, as it is too difficult to get 
the logs out by manual labour. These would square 
3 feet 6 inches. The largest cut now square about 30 
inches. They are obtained for special purposes, such as 
foundations for buildings and machinery on sugar estates. 
The smallest size cut squares from 9 to 12 inches. Large 
logs are from 50 to 60 feet long. A grant of 300 acres, 
which is the size of most of those I saw, is estimated to 
yield from 25,000 to 50,000 cubic feet of timber, the 
latter only, however, from land on which the bullet-tree 
is unusually plentiful, and by cutting out all the wood 
available for use upon the grant. 
I have already mentioned the geographical distribution 
of the bullet-tree. Its local distribution is general over 
the great belt of alluvium which stretches across the 
colony, but unequal and variable. To this low land it is 
confined, and does not anywhere inhabit the higher 
ground beyond this region. It is found scattered in 
single trees in varying proportions according to the 
district, or in reefs composed principally of bullet-tree 
alone. These reefs rise a few feet higher than the 
general level. They are of a clayey or sandy nature, 
more often the latter, and are separated, often distantly, 
by somewhat lower ground, or by swamps. The bullet- 
tree is more plentiful in both the eastern and western 
parts of the colony than in the intermediate region. On 
the Cuyuni it is common, extending to the Barima, and 
X 2 
