making properties, although it also is extensively used in the manufacture of linoleum. Since 1847 New Zealand has been exploiting its gum deposits, and to date they have yielded more than $80,000,000, or nearly twice as much as has been realized from coal produced within the Dominion in the same time. They still annually yield about $2,500,000, the greater portion of which is contributed by the United States, the heaviest buyer.
When kauri gum was first marketed it sold for only twenty-five dollars a ton; now the average price is about thirteen times greater. The most valuable gum is transparent, which sells as high as six hundred dollars a ton, and often is used as a substitute for amber.
The first gum marketed was extracted much easier than most of that found to-day; it was either on the surface or barely embedded. Next it was found about a foot below the ground; now much of it lies several feet underground. The gum also is obtained by climbing living trees and tapping them,—a hazardous method that is prohibited on Crown lands,—but by far the greater part is obtained from the ground, where from two to four layers are found, indicating the previous existence of as many forests.
In exuding from the trees the gum has solidified into brittle lumps and undergone so many chemical changes that experts can assort it into a score or more of grades. Many of these lumps weigh from fifty to one hundred pounds, and I learned of one that weighed three hundred and sixty pounds.
