By what alchemy of a subtler kind than any yet applied by man the tree draws from the gray Florida sand, from the black humus scattered through it, from the flooding rains of summer and the long glories of winter suns and the winds of space, this aromatic essence of pungency and fire no man can say. These are things for a deeper chemistry than that yet taught in the schools to fathom. So desired is it by artist and artisan that in a year more than three quarters of a million casks are shipped from Southern ports to the markets of the world, a massing of results that might well astound the Confucian alchemists of the elder race who first worked on the gum of the terebinthine tree. After some hours of heat all the turpentine has passed from the retort and the spigot is turned at the bottom of the tank that the residue may run off. In the old-time rough working of boxed trees this was a dark, viscid liquid which soon hardened in cooling into a brittle mass which is known the world over as rosin. To-day one may well be surprised and delighted to stand by the still when the liquid is drawn off and see what he gets. Instead of the dark mass he will see a pellucid flood which is dipped into the casks in which it is to harden and be shipped, at first a pale amber wine which might have got its color from the same source as that juice of the grape which flows from the vats in Italian vineyards. You may dip flowers in this liquid and take them out coated with a brittle transparency which is beautiful to look at and which will keep them, hermetically sealed and preserved, till a rough touch shatters the glassy envelope and it falls in splintered fragments. This is the finest rosin, the “water white” of the trade, bringing the distillers a matter of ten dollars or so a cask. The next best grade is known as “window glass,” almost the equal of the other in purity, and from that the quality runs down through grade after grade till the old-time opaque, dark red rosin stands at the bottom of the list. Twelve grades in all are commonly quoted by the trade. The flowing sap in the Florida pine trees is as susceptible as that of the Northern sugar maples to heat or cold. In the months of winter, December, January and February, little pitch is collected. In early summer or late spring the flow is best. But as the pine of the Southern forests is more stately and taciturn than the maple, so the movements of life within its veins are slower and more dignified. On a warm spring morning in Vermont you may hear the patter of the sap in the pails and see it drip from the very trees. A man may watch a Southern pine for long before he sees any amber tear pass from the trunk into the receptacle placed to hold it. That drumming of the rising sap is never heard.