PROTECTION OF PLANTATIONS. 69 



the planters found that they would be unable to harvest their crop. 

 In the West Indies and in many other tropical countries it has been 

 found difficult to grow fruits and other food crops in proximity to a 

 lawless native population, but rubber is even more difficult to protect, 

 because of its high value, its continued presence in the tree, the ease 

 with which it can be taken, the long time it can be stored, its small 

 bulk, and the facility with which it can be transported and marketed. 



These facts will increase the hazard of many rubber investments and 

 will render obvious the advantage of enterprises operated in settled 

 communities and protected by stable and responsible governments, for 

 in the waiting period of eight or ten years many vicissitudes may be 

 encountered. The ease and profit with which a rubber plantation 

 could be plundered would be equaled only by the havoc which would 

 result from reckless depredation. 



To meet ordinary needs of protection two expedients may be sug- 

 gested. In countries which are anxious to encourage the preservation 

 and planting of rubber others than landowners and planters could be 

 prohibited from marketing crude rubber or from having it in their 

 possession, merchants being compelled to account for their exports by 

 purchase from such authorized .persons. On the other hand, the use 

 by planters of special tapping tools not obtainable by the natives 

 would make it possible to detect the theft of rubber, which is now 

 extremely difficult. Indeed, the estates are often robbed by their own 

 employees, and the rubber sold from " our own trees' 1 by some of the 

 companies is said to be purchased from thieves who save the owners 

 the trouble of gathering their rubber. 



The problem of rubber gathering is thus a real one which should be 

 attacked with vigor and persistence. Not only are the present Cen- 

 tral American methods quite unsuitable for use with cultivated trees, 

 but there is a scarcity, and in many districts a complete absence, of 

 laborers capable of applying even the present barbarous treatment, 

 If their cultural efforts should prove successful it will be but a few 

 years when plantation managers who have set out trees by the hun- 

 dreds of thousands may find themselves unable to extract the liquid 

 wealth. The temptation will then be great to end the tedious waiting 

 for results by turning the plantations over to the mercies of the 

 "huleros," if, indeed, it be found practicable to prevent them from 

 helping themselves. 



METHODS OF COAGULATING THE LATEX OF CASTILLA. 

 COAGULATION BY CREAMING. 



The separation of rubber from the latex, a process commonly called 

 coagulation, is in a somewhat more advanced state of investigation 

 than the subject of tapping, if, indeed, the recent experiments of 



