263 " ■ 



Experiment 3 may be called a variant of. experiment i ; but 5 

 cuts only were made daily in those trees given over to the modifca-' 

 tion of M. Bonnechaux's metho;!. Tree 342 which was one of the trees 

 tapped by five cuts daily, can be seen in illustration 6 on page i63 of 

 the India Rubber Jour?ial, July 31st, 1905. 



Experiment 4 while repeating the morning-versus-evening ex- 

 periments, contrasted the results of daily and alternate day tapping 

 by the use of the herring-bone method. 



Experiments 5 and 6 were an elaboration of experiment 2. 



The year's results were held to condemn afresh, the brasilian 

 method of M. Bonnechaux, although, as said, from the point of yield 

 it had a hardly fair trial ; they indicated morning tapping as the right 

 thing, and they suggested that alternate day tapping by herring- 

 bones would yield more than daily tapping per unit of labour. 

 Incidentally the inconvenience of multiplying the number of cups on 

 the trees became evident, although the ten long cuts converging 

 in pairs did yield at a high rate. 



In no single case were the cuts reopened more than twenty-eight 

 times; for it was feared that the tree might thereby be killed. It had 

 become more clearly recognised that the tapping implements used 

 were ill-suited to the purpose ; and in the end of the first of- the 

 reports Mr. Derry pointed out that the danger lay in the depth of the 

 incision and not in the quantity of surface removed ; he added that 

 the half inch carpenter's chisel " is not an instrument that can be 

 commended, as apart from the possibility of punching too deeply, 

 there is also the danger of raising the bark." It has been mentioned 

 above that Mr. Arden discarded it. 



The carpenter's gouge which at this time was being used on the 

 Bukit Lintang Estate, was there too recognised as liable to cause 

 injury and the tapping was limited to two short periods per annum 

 of only fifteen days— fourteen reopenings. 



The year 1905 was hardly an experimental-tapping year as ' 

 regards the trees in the Botanic Gardens, Singapore, used in 1904 ; 

 for though the trees were tapped, they were treated in a tapping 

 rotation ; and they were all cut in herring-bones, but with varying 

 periods of reopening. A report appeared in the Agricultural Bulletin 

 of the Straits and F.M.S., v., 1906, p. 439. 



The trees which had made experiment I, in 1904, were all tapped 

 alike, and twice within the twelve months — just a little more boldly 

 than were the trees of the Bukit Lintang Estate, for there were twenty- 

 four and twenty-one reopenings of the wound at the respective 

 periods. The trees of experiments 3, 4, 5 and 6, at a different time for • 

 each group, were tapped alike. But as there had been a considerable- 

 number of deaths among the trees either by wind or by Fames or 

 by other causes, new trees were put into the tapping rounds to 



