Balata and the Balata Industry. 215 
periodically for an indefinite number of years. The practice 
of the collectors to a considerable extent proves this. 
Allowance must be made of course for the unfavourable 
influence on the restoration of the milk-giving powers 
of the reckless way in which much of the tapping has 
been performed, but as I have before mentioned, instead 
of re-tapping the bases of the trees worked in former 
years, they are now either felling the same trees or using 
ladders to get at the virgin bark ; experience having 
taught them that, relatively at any rate, it would not 
pay to go over the old bark again. With a tree produc- 
ing wood of so great an intrinsic value as the bullet-tree, 
these questions are of great importance as affecting 
forest conservancy ; for after all in regard to the timber 
of this tree, the balata which the bark yields can only 
be looked upon and treated in the legislation required 
for the control of the trade as a by-product, as for instance, 
the bark of the oak, which is used for tanning, is in Europe. 
If the milk under certain changes of conversion ot which 
we know little, which on a former page I have admitted 
as probable, is used in the elaboration of tissue, or per- 
forms any accretive function in the development of the 
tree, and when if drawn off artificially, it is, as I have 
shown, very slowly restored, the growth of the tree 
must be retarded by tapping, however carefully it may 
be done. On the other hand if the milk is very slowly 
restored when drawn off artificially, this may indicate 
that it is material not really required or much used in 
the development of the tree. A special and more care- 
ful and extensive investigation of this aspect of the 
balata trade than the want of time and general character 
of my inquiry allowed me to make of the forests of Ber- 
