CLIMATE OF PARA RUBBER TREE. 4? 



Notwithstanding the apparently unfavorable 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 W inches, having increased 

 from 36 inches in 1897, when tapping was commenced. 



THE TRUE CLIMATE OF HEVEA. 



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

 variance with prevalent opinions concerning climatic requirements 

 that the possibility of a similar error having been made with refer- 

 ence to Hevea naturally suggested itself, and various indications like 

 the preceding were found in the literature of the subject suggesting 

 that this might prove to be the case. Shortly afterwards 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 conclu- 

 sive that we need wonder only that so important a point should have 

 been so long overlooked: 



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

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

 ants 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 con- 

 ditions there. This the more so since a very general error seems to have obtained 

 that swampy or wet lands are the fitting locality for the Hevea. This would seem 

 to have arisen in that the "explorer" of a few years' experience would have some 

 of these trees pointed out to him (naturally in answer to inquiries) growing scat- 

 tered along in the wet margins in going up the lower Amazon or tributaries, whereas 

 the true forests of the Para Indian rubber trees lie back on the highlands, and those 

 commonly seen by the inquiring traveler are but ill-grown trees which have sprung 

 up from seeds brought down by freshets from the interior. 



As a matter of fact, the whole of the Hevea which I procured for the government 

 of India were the produce of large grown trees in the forest covering the broad 

 plateaus dividing the Tapajos from the Madeira River. The soil of these well- 

 drained, wide-extending forest-covered table-lands is stiff, not remarkably rich, but 

 deep and uniform in character. The Hevea found growing in these unbroken 

 forests rivals all but the largest of the trees therein, attaining to a circumference of 

 10 feet to 12 feet in the bole. These forest plains having all the character of wide- 

 spread table-lands occupy the space betwixt the great arterial river systems of the 

 Amazon, and present an escarped face, which follows at greater or less distance and 

 abuts steeply on the igapo or bagas, i. e., the marginal river plains subject to inun- 

 dation bv the annual rise of the great river. So thorough is the drainage of this 

 highland that the people who annually penetrate into these forests for the season's 

 working of the rubber have to utilize certain lianas (water-bearing vines) for their 

 water supply, since none is to be obtained by surface-well sinking, in spite of the 

 heavy rainfall during a great part of the year. " 



a Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and Federated Malay States, September, 

 1902, pp. 476-477. 



