Kauri Gum Mining in New Zealand

Several years ago, while on a trip to New Zealand, the writer had an opportunity to see something of what is known as kauri gum mining in that country. This industry consists of digging a resinous material which in bygone times has exuded from kauri trees and has become imbedded in the soil or subsoil, where it exists in a fossil condition, often in remarkably large quantities. The kauri tree (Agathis australis Salisbury; Dammara australis Lambert) is characteristic of certain parts of New Zealand, though it is confined geographically to narrow limits, and is most abundant from Cape North southward to the Auckland peninsula, in about latitude 370 S., a distance of about 200 miles, where its gigantic size makes it the monarch of the forests. It is found but rarely south of latitude 380 S. It -occurs most plentifully at rather low altitudes, and is rare at elevations of over 1,500 feet, though some trees have been found at 2,500 feet or more.1 The kauri tree has a straight, symmetrical trunk, rising frequently from eighty to one hundred feet in height and sometimes even as much as one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and fifty feet. In diameter the full-grown tree varies from four to twelve feet, while in extreme cases it may measure twenty feet or more. The top of the tree is large and spreads out in heavy branches, while the trunk is comparatively smooth, with a gray bark which peels off and collects in heaps at the base of the tree. The kauri is not so large as some of the largest of the redwood (Sequoia) trees of California, but it occupies the same position of prominence in the New Zealand forests as do the latter on the western coast of the United States. Like the redwoods also it is very valuable for lumber, and many of the once magnificent forests have been cut down, but enough remain to attest to their former grandeur. x T. Kirk, The Forest Flora of New Zealand, Wellington, N.Z. (1889), p. 150. 38