PLANTATION RUBBER INDUSTRY OF THE EAST. 443 



In the report of the Forest Department, Singapore, for 1891, 

 it is stated that seeds were obtained from Kew in that year! 

 There is no record of any such consignment in the Kew 

 pubhcations, and Ceylon was then supplying seed to Kew for 

 transmission to the West Indies. It seems highly improbable 

 that Kew ever supplied Hevea seed to any Botanic Garden 

 in the East, but in the Agricultural BuUetin of the Malay 

 Peninsula (1898), p. 230, Ridley, in a discussion of earlier 

 records, stated " seed has been successfully sent from South 

 America via England, though usually with much loss." 

 However, in the Straits Bulletin, IV. (1905), p. 308, the 

 same author remarks that " This plant seems never to have 

 been successfully introduced again from South America." 



In the " Tropical Agriculturist " for October, 1898, there 

 appears an interview with Mr. T. Christy, who was then 

 engaged in supplying, from England, seeds and plants to 

 tropical countries. According to this article, Mr. Christy 

 stated, as evidence of the success of Para rubber, that he had 

 recently exported thousands of young plants for plantations. ^ 

 There would, however, appear to be some doubt as to the 

 accuracy of this report, as, in an account of Mr. Christy's 

 gardens in the " Gardeners' Chronicle," about the same date, 

 reference is made to " young rubber plants {Castilloa elastica) 

 for exportation." ^ 



The Species introduced. 

 During recent years, it has on several occasions been sugges- 

 ted that the Hevea introduced into the East is not the species 

 which yields the fine hard Para of commerce, the idea being 

 in nearly all cases based upon the alleged inferiority of some 

 grades of plantation rubber. And a somewhat similar question 

 has compelled the attention of the rubber planter, namely, 

 whether all the intioduced Hevea trees belong to the same 

 species. The inferiority, real or supposed, of plantation rubber 

 is in most cases capable of explanation in other ways, more 

 especially by the age of the tree ; but the planter certainly has 

 good grounds for questioning the identity of all the Hevea 

 trees on his estate. He sees enormous variation in the size 



1 "Tropical Agriculturist," XVII .,p. 277. 



2 "Tropical Agriculturist," XVIII., p. 284. 



