Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/377

 profitably may be several years, three at least. Then if let alone it does not die. The sun which draws rich aromas from the resin on the long scar leaves behind a seal of hardened pitch which closes the wound and beneath such bark as is left the sap rises still to the nourishment of the leaves above. After a few years the man may come back with his ax and again draw revenue from new wounds that cut through the yet untouched bark. Another "crop of boxes" extending through more years depletes the final vitality of the tree. After that its value is measured only by the worth of the sap-drained lumber remaining in its trunk.

The Chinese taught the world the first rudiments of the uses of turpentine. As one follows one art of modern civilization after another to its source, it is surprising how many of them came from the far slopes of eastern Asia. It seems sometimes as if the Chinese had grown old in the arts before we of the Western world began to know there was any such thing, old and forgetful of most of them but still having lingering traditions on which we base our first halting experiments. Through them came to the shores of the Mediterranean in the unremembered ages the knowledge of the uses of the oil and the gum of the terebinthine tree, a rudimentary knowledge which modern chemistry has expanded into a