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pecting to find, has little real bearing in rubber culture in view of 

 the extreme difficulty of carrying on agricultural operations in 

 such a country. Moreover the average maximum yield obtainable 

 by the destruction of full-grown trees is placed by Mr. Jenman at 

 I pound, which was several times greater than what could be 

 secured by tapping. 



PRODUCTIVENESS OF PARA RUBBER TREES IN DRY SITUATION. 

 A Para rubber tree in the Botanic Garden at Penang, on the 

 Malay Peninsula, is noteworthy as having a reliable record of six 

 tappings in five years, with a total of 15 pounds and 10 ounces of 

 rubber. The tree was set out in 1886, and was about eleven years 

 old before it was tapped. Some of the incidents, as related in the 

 following paragraph, are not without interest : 



No particular attention was paid to these trees at the time more than to the 

 many other economic and ornamental plants that were planted in this garden that 

 year, then in course of foundation, and it so happened that two were planted side 

 by side on poor gravelly soil on i-loping ground, which, by th • subsequent cutting 

 of a new road al .ngside them some years later, converted the site on which they 

 are growing into what is virtually a dry bank When, some ten years after these 

 trees were planted, the questions of the bet method of extracting and coMgulating 

 rubber, and the probable yield to be expected, commenced to interest the planting 

 community, this tree as been the largest in the garden, ^vas selected for experi- 

 ments, whicli have been continued from time to time and the result recorde I in 

 the annual reports. Therv is nothing remarkable about this tree except, that, as 

 plantei's have often remarked, it is remarkably small for its age, out that is not 

 surprising, consi<lering the nature of the soil and the situation in which it is 

 growing.* 



Notwithstanding the apparently unfavourable conditions and the 

 rather severe treatment to which it has been subjected, the tree is 

 described as in healthy condition, with all its wounds healed. It 

 has a height of about 55 feet and a girth of 66 inches, having 

 increased from 36 inches in 1 897, when tapping was commenced. 



THE TRUE CLIMATE OF HEVEA. 



The results of the writer's observations on Castilloa were so much 

 at variance with prevalent opinions concerning climatic require- 

 ments that the possibility of a similar error having been made with 

 reference to Hevea naturally suggested itself, and various indica- 

 tions like the preceding were found in the literature of the subject 

 suggesting that this might prove to be the case. Shortly after- 

 wards there appeared the following quotation from a paper written 

 by Mr. H. A. Wickham, who made the original introduction of 

 Hevea seeds from Brazil to British India, and whose testimony is 

 so direct and conclusive that we need wonder only that so import- 

 ant a point should have been so long overlooked : 



But as all the stock of plants or seeds available for the planting and cultivation 

 of this tree in the Eastern Tropics are and will be derived from direct lineal 

 descendants of some or other of those 7,000-odd originally introduced by me at 

 the instance of the Government of India in 1876 77, it may be well if it be 

 recollected that their exact place of origin was in 3° of south latitude, and to 

 remember their natural conditions there. This the more so since a very general 

 error seems to have obtained that swampy or wet bmds are the fi ting locality for 

 the Heve . This would seem to have arisen in that the " explorer" of a few years' 



* Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and Federated Malay States, 1 : 385. August 1902 



