196 TlMEHRI. 
All this is due to a lamentable want of intelligence. It 
takes more time, and no more milk is obtained, while 
the tree is irretrievably damaged, and where, as above, 
the bark is divided into isolated patches recovery is 
impossible. Numerous instances occur in the forests 
that have been worked for balata of dead trees, ere6l and 
desolate as if blasted by lightning, due to the latter 
cause. The largest I saw was a mature tree eighty or 
ninety feet high. Smaller examples in various stages of 
decay are common. The more intelligent collectors tap 
only one side of a small tree — that is, say of a tree of 
a foot in diameter — leaving the other side for the 
following year, but sometimes the channels are carried 
so far round, till in fact they nearly meet behind, that, 
though the milk is all drawn off on one side, practically 
the whole circumference has been bled. The more 
thoughtless work which I have condemned is frequently 
practised on both sides of the smaller, and on all sides of 
the larger trees, as if the more effectually to encompass 
their ruin. When ladders are employed the same 
methods are practised on the additional surface thus 
reached. Occasionally it extends as far as thirty feet 
from the ground. As the calabash at the base of the 
trunk becomes full, it is replaced, or, to avoid this, others 
are inserted higher up ; but if the tree be only tapped as 
far as the operator can reach from the ground, a single 
good calabash will hold the yield, and requires no 
watching. Large trees are always tapped on the 
opposite sides, and, as with the smaller ones just men- 
tioned, careful collectors leave the intervening spaces tor 
subsequent years. A tree thus treated very soon heals, 
more especially if no more bark was removed than the 
