Read it through once

When travelling through the coast forests of pine trees in the Landes of Western France, one notices great bare gashes on the stems leading round and down the trunk to a small tin cup or spout. These trees are being tapped for resin, from which rosin is manufactured. It would be difficult to find any obvious connexion between music and the Giant Sawfly. Yet the rosin used by Paganini and Kubelik has probably been developed in Conifers to keep away sawflies and other enemies. This very district, the Landes in France, was once practically a desert, and famous as such in French history. The soil was so barren that no villages or cultivation were found over the whole length of it. Now that it is planted with trees which are able to yield firewood and rosin, it is comparatively rich and prosperous.