KAuURI ‘‘ Q@uM.”’ 33 
together. Qld ‘‘ gum-diggers ’’ have assured me that Kauri resin from 
green trees has the property of running together after some time into 
one solid mass. 
A curious belief which Kirk asserts as a fact (‘‘ Forest Flora ’’) is 
that ground which has been thoroughly turned over (as carefully as a 
potato-field) and had all its lumps of resin taken out will, after some 
years, yield another crop of resin lumps! 
The well-grown foreign Kauri trees in the poor soil of the Botanic 
Gardens, Sydney, are described at p. 27. This ability to thrive on very 
poor soil may be connected with the abundant production of resin in 
Kauri trees; and it is worth noting that the world’s two chief resin- 
producing pines, Pinus palustris and P. pinaster, are both remarkable 
for growing well on very poor barren sandy soils where few other trees 
can grow at all—white drift sand with clay below, the actual soil where 
Kauri flourishes near the coast at Waipoua. 
Conclusions, 
The general aspect of resin-tapping in other countries is that whereas 
formerly it was done indiscriminately, and ruined much good forest, 
It is now being increasingly done under proper control, to the good of 
the forest revenue, and without harm to the timber. In France, and 
latterly in some of the Indian forests, the forest revenue is greater from 
the resin than from the timber. In Gascony resin-tapping improves the 
timber undoubtedly, and is believed to improve the growth, acting as a 
tonic. The industry there goes back to Roman times. 
| see no reason why resin-tapping in the future Kauri forests of New 
Zealand should not be as lucrative as in Gascony, where as an industry 
it compares with sheep in New Zealand, affording, however, considerably 
more employment; in fact, to a large extent it has replaced sheep there. 
Gascony under sheep was a desert compared to what it is now. Few of 
the picturesque shepherds on stilts are now seen; but one can travel for 
a whole day, in a quick train, through an endless succession of farms 
where, as mentioned above, ordinary farming and resin-tapping work 
in together; and all this in the climate of the Canterbury Plains! 
My Exprermuent on KaAurt R&SIN-TAPPING, 
‘* Guin-bleeders ’’? and bushmen in Auckland are agreed that the Kauri 
“bleeds ’’ only from the cut bark, never from the wood. It is thus not 
clear how, as is alleged, ‘‘ gum-bleeding "’ can injure the timber. It 
seems that what is required for rational Kauri resin-tapping is a man 
able to use a light sharp axe so as to open out thin wedge-shaped slits 
through the bark, barely touching the wood, such slits being lengthened, 
and lightly scraped or shaved clean, from time to time (‘‘ refreshed,” 
as the French say), so as to ensure the continual flow of resin, without 
having a slit at any time as wide as in French resin-tapping, which in 
Kauri would risk the borer getting in. 
Tt seems likely that indiarubber-tapping in the future may take the 
form of bark-pricking rather than of bark-cutting, and that may be the 
case with Kauri resin, cleaning it perhaps by a recently described process, 
It is stated that the practice, in illicit ‘‘ gum-bleeding,’’ of cutting 
a large notch in the trees is simply as a receptacle for the resin, like 
the American ‘‘ boxes’’ used in tapping Long-leaf Pine. Some re- 
ceptacle is required to catch the gum, and probably old jam or other 
tins would be sufficient for the purpose. There are piles of such tins in 
the refuse-heaps of New Zealand towns not using destructors. In South 
