Note 290 — Chapter III · (continued 3)

At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork tree is stripped of its outer bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior quality, and is employed for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for lampblack. After this, a new layer of cork, an inch or an inch and a quarter in thickness, is formed about once in ten years, and is removed in large sheets without injury to the tree, which lives a hundred and fifty years or more. According to Clavé (p. 252), the annual product of a forest of cork oaks is calculated at about 660 kilogrammes, worth 150 francs, to the hectare, which, deducting expenses, leaves a profit of 100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound weight, and eight dollars profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national domain in Algeria cover about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at rates which are expected, when the whole is rented, to yield to the state a revenue of about $2,000,000.

George Sand, in the Histoire de ma Vie, speaks of the cork forests in Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and states, what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that Russia is the best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the trees are slit into thin plates, and used to line the walls of apartments in that cold climate.