The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-09
DIGGING FOR KAURI GUM.
AN AHINDUsTRFPECULIAR TO NEW
 ZEALAND.

How the Valuable Fossil Resin is Found and soId-Men Who Have
 Made Fortunes ut the Trade-Rights
 Which Are Reserved by the Govern
 ment.
 When the traveller crossing the Pac- fife first hears that a large number of the inhabitants of New Zealand earn their living by digging gum, he is apt to receive the information with an in- credulity born of previous experience of board ship yarns. Nevertheless, it is true, says the Los Angeles Times. This queer trade is, indeed, peculiar to that colony, among the exports of which kauri gum ranks high, for New Zealand alone produces the kauri tree. Qle of the first things you see on g4anding at~Auckland is gray ware houses inscribed with the name of a firm and the words, "KauTi Gum Ex- porters." Enter one of these, make yourself eivilly known as an inquiring stranger and the proprietor will show you samples of his wares. How like amber" you say as you handle tran parent lump as big as a melon, but weighing. it seems. no more than so much hay, and of the color of brown sherry. This is kauri gum of the best quality, worth just now nearly $500 a ton. Other specimens, some of which enclose leaves and small twigs, are dark brown, and even black, so stain- ed by decaying bark and peaty infus- ions. Tn size they range from frag- ments as small as walnuts to great, shapeless chunks weighing eigthy or a hundred pounds. The "gum,' you are told, is really fossilized resin, found in the earth anywhere between the surface and depth of about fif- a teen feet. The sample that you hold in your hand is perhaps all that re- mains of giant kauri tree that four ished in the soil of prehistoric New Zealand. ' %f@-
 The kauri, of course, still grows in the colony. Like the redwood in Cali fornia, it furnishes the boards and blanks of the colonial homes. Fol that reason the most accessible lumber has been long ago cut down, and to see an extensive forest you must Journey to the far north, to Hokiaga or the Bay of Islands. The tree, mix. ed with the beautiful native ferns spreads itself in great, dark, lonely woods along the banks of the estuar. les that indent that region.
 It is a confer, scientifically named agathis, or Dammara Australia, at. tains height of eigthy or even 3 hundred feet, and measures round its gray, smooth bark from ten to twenty. five feet. Its close set loaves resemble those of the South Sea Island Arau- cari rather than our pine needles. Nol is it pinelike in habit, for 1t branche: high up the trunck, and the limbs spread widely, giving the tree a dome like contour. The modern kauri has not lost the gum producing faculty but the honeyIike masses that col1ect in its crotches are of inferior com, mercial value. .... ...
 It is only the fossil resin that is ex ported. This is searched for in tht .gum fields,'' we'll defined district 1T the North Island coextensive, of course with the area of the vanished kaurs forests. Auckland is it's centre, and i extends from the Waikato River, soutl of Aukland, to the extreme North Cape, a distance of 200 miles.
 In this wide region, some people say gum may be found anywhere. Th' farmer, turning, over a piece of nev
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