259 



It is interesting that M. Bonnechaux only a few months after 

 Mr. Arden had remarked on "the rapidity with which the wounds 

 heal" (Report on Hevea brasiliensis, p. 13), should have insisted so 

 strongly that the trees tapped by herring-bones "would in the 

 Amazons be speedily destroyed by insects attacking the exposed 

 wood" (1. c, p. 45) and obviously M. Bonnechaux's knowledge of 

 Malayan conditions was slight. Nevertheless Mr. Arden had feared 

 to reopen the cuts that were becoming wide, and had desisted from 

 tapping in every case beyond the fourteenth time. But on the whole 

 the remarks of both men really point us to the amount of damage 

 that was done by the tapping implements used. * 



After M. Bonnechaux's few days stay were over, Mr. Machado 

 continued to tap as started by him, but using only 100 trees. He 

 tapped from March 4th. to May 27th. (Agricultural Bulletin of the 

 Straits and F.M.S., ii., p. 47, 112, and 264). He made one cut only 

 with the axe on each of the first five days, and then two cuts to each 

 tree on each of the next four days, and then ten cuts four times on 

 twenty trees or five cuts once on forty trees but thereafter four cuts 

 for the most part on every other day up to twenty three repetitions. 



These lOO trees so treated were certainly chosen from among the 

 150 tapped by M. Bonnechaux; and it is recorded that they all stood 

 in the triangle of the plantation near to the entrance gate (I.e., p. 46), 

 which we now call Block i. 



Tapping at this date was done no longer in the evening, but in 

 the morning. 



"Conjointly ten large trees growing under more favourable 

 circumstances than the hundred were tapped eighteen times in 

 seventy-five days" (Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and F.M.S., 

 ii., 1905, p. 113, vide also p. 266) by M. Bonnechaux's method. These 

 trees can only be those standing in a row which were the oldest 

 that the Gardens possessed. It is recorded along with this informa- 

 tion that in previous years they had been very heavily tapped by the 

 herring-bone method (p. 112). "Very heavily" in this case would 

 mean that they were abundantly scarred by reason of the repetition 

 of tapping in different parts of the trunk, not that they had been 

 submitted to any continued tapping. 



Mr. Machado now set aside another 100 trees, and tapped them 

 by M. Bonnechaux's method twenty-three times in thirty-three days, 

 commencing on May 29th., (I.e. p. 265). One cut was made on the first 

 day and on the four following days; two cuts were made on the 

 next four days, then four, and after that more up to ten cuts. 

 The reader by turning to the plate issued with the Agricultural 

 Bulletin of the Straits and F.M.S., for November, 1903, may note 



* Many were fully aware of this. Mr. Ridley in 1897 (Agricultural Bulletin of the Malay 

 Peninsula, No. 7, p. 136) and the writer of the article "rubber" in Span's Encyclopaedia had alike 

 suggested a g'.iard on the knife put into a ccol'.e's hand for tapping. 



