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use has been put to the test of practical applicability in a systematic 

 manner to a large estate of, say, 1,000 acres. I propose to review the 

 methods that have been put forward and which have in a mild and 

 tentative manner been adopted, and to endeavour in a scientific 

 manner to critically examine the probability of their success on 

 a larce scale and to give some scheme which as the result of this 

 analysis may be adopted. In the first place the aim of all and on this 

 one and only point, is there anything like full agreement, is to make 

 money, that is to say to obtain the greatest possible return of rubber 

 with the least possible expenditure, without doing damage to the 

 trees, without killing the goose that is to lay the golden eggs. Each 

 system of tapping therefore, must be looked at from the three points 

 of view, namely the return of rubber, the cost of working and the 

 probable damage to the trees as sources of rubber. Aesthetic and 

 sentimental considerations can have no place. 



The first and a simple system is that of single cuts, each Vicing a 

 few inches long, and obliquely set. The inclination being from 20° to 

 30° to the horizontal. At the lower end of each cut, a cup is fixed by 

 being pushed into the bark, the portion of the bark thus raised acting 

 as a lip over which the latex trickles into the cups. 



On successive or on alternate days the lower face of the cut is 

 pared off and the latex caused again to flow. This process, continued 

 for about fifteen times of re-opening, has with individual trees 

 yielded a large return of rubber per tree — some claim that the largest 

 returns have been obtained in this way. It is also claimed that the 

 scars heal quickly. That the returns per length of cut surface are 

 any greater with this method than with any other I very much doubt. 

 Experiments made with a few trees or with small sets of trees are 

 certainly of value, but in so far as they are not carried out under the 

 same conditions of cooly labour and rate of working as would obtain 

 on a large estate in actual practice must be accepted with reserve, and 

 until tests have been made on an estate over a considerable area by 

 estate coolies I consider the increased returns shewn by this system to 

 be not proved. 



There are on the other hand very real objections to this method, 

 in the first place the cuts are scattered and irregular, and while no 

 damage is done to the tree itself, yet the bark is greatly roughened 

 and the topping surface rendered irregular and more difficult to work 

 a second time. From my oAvn observation, I am inclined ti beli> 

 that the gaping of the bark produced by a first cut is out of all pro- 

 portion to the material removed. It is rather like the effect of the 

 first cut into a roast leg of mutton. Subsequent shaving and reopen- 

 ing widens the gape by the amount removed and by no more. Conse- 

 quently a disjointed and scattered series of short cuts leads to a rough 

 and scarred bark on which is difficult to work. But a second and 

 more important objection is the number of cups required tor such a 

 style of tapping. Ten cups to a moderate sized tree — say 28 inches 

 girth at 3 feet from the base, is a very modest allowance. It only 

 requires a simple multiplication sum to shew that with 1,000 acres of 

 120 trees to the acre, and the plantation tapped entirely twice a year, 

 each cut being reopened fifteen times, nearly 100,000 cups would be 

 required daily, or taking each cup as weighing about one ounce, then 



