KAURI “‘ GUM.”’ 31 
There is a remarkable collection of Kauri resin in the Agricultural 
Department, Wellington. It is in two glass cases, and consists of some 
samples of various sorts of resin—yellow in every tint, and in varying 
degrees of cloudiness, jet black, and one green-tinted sample. This fine 
collection was got together for the Panama Exhibition of 1915. The 
Christchurch Museum shows a huge piece of tree-resin. 
What is known as resin-tapping (French resinageé) is called “ gum- 
bleeding ’’ in New Zealand. The local name rather prejudges the 
operation, since the sap of the tree is not concerned, The so-called 
‘“oum’* is resin, and the so-called ‘*‘ gum-bleeding’*’ is more akin to 
a man’s ‘‘ wiping the sweat from his brow.’’ The Kauri tree, or the 
man, may be oversweated, but there is no evidence that work in modera- 
tion may not be good for both. French foresters state that their 
systematic resin-tapping seems to invigorate the tree. That 1t improves 
the timber is unquestionable: it turns sapwood into wood like heart- 
wood. (‘‘ Australian Forestry,”’ p. 79.) 
A Kauri tree can be resin-tapped without interfering with the sap, 
all the large resin-ducts being in the bark and outside the cambium- 
layer and sap-circulation. It is not so with the Maritime-pine, the 
tree of the great resin industry of France; so that here is strong @ 
priori evidence in favour of the systematic resin-tapping of Kauri. 
Much has been written about the ‘‘ gum-bleeding ’’ or resin-tapping 
of Kauri, viz.: Mr. Cheeseman, ‘‘ The Kauri Tree*’; Report of Kauri- 
gum Commission, 1898; extract from above reprinted in the New Zealand 
Official Year-book for 1899; Dr. Cockayne’s Report on Botanical 
Survey of Waipoua Forest, p. 4; Mr. H. J. Matthews’s Forestry Opera- 
tions (Rep. Lands Dept., 1905, p. 71). 
There is no evidence that the resin-tapping of Kauri, if properly 
practised, does any harm to the living tree or the timber cut from the 
felled tree. The mischief that has been done to Kauri trees by ‘‘ gum- 
bleeding *’ seems to be due to the want of forestry and a Forest Depart- 
ment, to see that the resin-tapping was properly done. The resin as 
it flows from the Kauri trees and hardens usually depreciates in value 
for want of cupping, and its market price varies according to the 
amount of bark and dirt mixed with it. It seems probable that the 
Kauri “gum” from a forest such as the Waipoua Forest would in 
itself repay a large part of the cost of organizing and working the forest 
rationally, It is possible that Kauri, like the Cluster-pine (or Maritime- 
pine) of France, may come to be cultivated with the resin as its chief 
product. This is one of the important forestry questions that have 
been awaiting investigation by foresters for half a century in New 
Zealand ! 
The remarkable photo opposite (for which I am indebted to Mr. Skeet, 
the Commissioner of Lands, Auckland) shows what mischief may be done 
to a Kauri tree by unrestricted ‘‘ gum-bleeding.’’ It is easy to see how 
a vigorous young tree attacked in this way must suffer, especially when 
the gashes the ‘‘ bleeders*’ have there made, and which, it will be ob- 
served, are running freely, come to be enlarged. Usually the gashes are 
confined to the base, ‘Trees are often completely girdled by such gashes. 
Then the circulation of the sap is interfered with, such timber becomes 
half-dry, the tree ‘‘ stag-headed,’’ and eventually it dies. In Waipoua, 
where there has been little ‘‘ gum-bleeding,’’ I estimated the proportion 
of dead Kauri trees at 4 per cent. (See p. 27, ‘‘ Waipoua Kauri Forest.’’) 
‘‘ Gum-bleeding,’’ as practised by the Kauri ‘‘ gum-bleeders,’’ is 
x 
what the French call expressively gemmage a& mort—vyiz., tapping to 
