2l8 TlMEHRI. 
checked, if the demand for balata continues, will in a 
few years reach a great magnitude, but hitherto it 
has not been the worst. On grants and unlet crown 
lands, the damage that has been infli6ted on standing 
trees by careless bleeding appeared to me during my 
migrations worse. Comparatively few of them will so 
recover, I believe, as to make sound forest trees. 
Where the wood has been damaged, no new layers are 
formed, and the bark does not grow over it, so that it 
remains exposed to the atmosphere, and, of course, is 
affe&ed by decay. On each side of the gutters, the new 
layers of wood, in the trees that were tapped a few 
years ago, may be seen to have formed, and the edges 
of the bark quite healed — the gutters by the addition of 
the new layers to the contiguous wood becoming deeper 
and deeper every year. When made, they were only 
about a quarter or one-third of an inch deep, but I 
measured some that by the addition of wood since, on 
each side had become over an inch deep. Possibly, in 
time the gutters will close, but, to whatever age the tree 
attains, the wood will remain in a damaged state. But 
this kind of damage is not all ; I have mentioned the 
dead trees seen here and there, and the cases were from 
the same cause,- -crossing the gutters in tapping — the 
lingering struggle for recovery is hopeless. Indeed, with 
a permanent and good demand for balata, such as the 
American market may not unlikely in the future give, 
with the pressure which the growing scarceness of the 
virgin trees will create, the disappearance of even 
damaged ones will be only a question of a not distant 
time. It is sometimes said in excuse, if not justification, 
of the illicit trade, that the forests ought not to be 
