February i, 1907.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



147 



Progress of Rubber Planting. 



HUBBEE PLANTATIONS IN FASA STATE. 



THE planting of rubber seems to have received more attention 

 in the Amazon Valley than has been generally known. 

 Reference was made in The India Rudder World last 

 month to the serious treatment of this subject in the recent an- 

 nual messages of the governors at Para and Manaiis. Since then 

 a copy of the Follia do Norte, of Para, comes to hand with an 

 article on plantations of rubber already established in the Amazon 

 region. 



The information is gained from a Senhor Moura, a Portuguese 

 for 12 years manager of a rubber seringal (camp) at Porto Ale- 

 gTO, on the river Madeira, owned by a mercantile house. A dozen 

 or more Brazilians are mentioned, mainly in the Manicore district, 

 who have planted more or less rubber. One plantation is men- 

 tioned as dating from 1886, though for the most part the trees 

 under cultivation are about three years old, at which age a height 

 of S meters is reached. Some of the planters named have 2000 or 

 3000 planted trees each, and one is named with 20,000 trees. Gen- 

 erally, according to Senhor Moura, the planting has been done by 

 merchants, and the progress made has been such as to encourage 

 them to contiinie planting. In addition to what is reported above, 

 Folha do Norte says that it is well known at Para that rubber 

 has been planted on several foreign owned estates in Brazil. 



HAWAIIANS PLAMTING IN THE MALAY STATES. 



The Pahans Rubber Co., Limited, incorporated in the territory 

 of Hawaii, with $150,000 capital, have leased 2000 acres in Pahang, 

 one of the Federated Malay States, on which to establish a plan- 

 tation of Hevea rubber. The program for igo6 called for tlie 

 planting of 200 acres, and it is planned to have 1000 acres in 

 rubber within three years. Dr. E. C. Waterhouse, of Honolulu, 

 is president of the company; D. P. R. Isenberg, vice president, 

 and Fred T. P. Waterhouse, secretary and treasurer. The man- 

 ager on the estate is George M. Hording. 



PLANTING •■CASTILLOA" RUBBER IN COLOMBIA. 



Writing from Quibdo, in the valley of the Atrato, in Colombia, 

 on the planting of Castilloa rubber in progress there, Mr. J. E. 

 Diaz predicts that within five years there will be more than 

 3,000,000 trees under cultivation. This region was referred to at 

 length in The Indi.\ Rudder World of December i, 1905 (page 

 75), and a map given, showing the location of several plantations 

 of rubber. Mr. Diaz gives the e.xtent of several of these, as fol- 

 lows: Mehik & Co.. 150 acres; Abuchar Hermanos, 260; Henry 

 G. Granger, 560; Juan C. Olier, 350; Tomas Guerrero, 270; Juan 

 L. Castro, 290 acres. The most important of all, it is stated, is 

 "La Felicia," owned by Gonzalo Zuniga, on which there is 1000 

 acres of rubber from one to four years old. 



A FAR EASTERN SCARE AT AN END. 



Certain reports which were cabled around the world not long 

 ago relative to an alleged "rubber trust," designed to "corner" 

 the entire supply of crude rubber, gave some concern to the plant- 

 ing interest in the Far East. The basis of the report was the 

 strengthening of the European end of the organization which 

 supplies raw material for the United States Rubber Co. and its 

 constituent companies. The Straits Times, of Singapore, after 

 an investigation of the "trust" r\imors. disposes of the matter in 

 an editorial which concludes as follows: "Renter wired the news 

 of an attempted or concluded operation in the corner line, and set 

 everybody out here wondering how a corner would aflfect their 

 interests in rubber. It is evident now that no corner has been 

 attempted or intended, and all that has taken place has been a 

 legitimate eflfort on the part of an amalgamation of rubber com- 

 panies to secure a sufficiency of that commodity to meet require- 

 ments." 



MEXICAN PLANTING NOTES. 



The shareholders in The Tchuantepec Rubber Culture Co. 

 (New York) have elected as oflficial inspector, to visit Plantation 

 "Rubio" this year, Mr. A. St. John Whiting, of Boston, who was 

 to start for Me-xico during January. 



The Grijalva Land and Coffee Co., Limited (Chicago) hope to 

 complete this year the planting on the tract known as the Monte- 

 zuma plantation in Chiapas, Mexico, of some 1000 acres of Cas- 

 tilloa rubber. Part of the rubber already planted is now about 

 six years old, and about 400 acres two years old. 



Professor L. A. Ostien, widely known for the work he has done 

 in the State .^gricultural Schoo'. of Utah, and who is familiar with 

 Mexican planting, lately returned from a tour of the "hot coun- 

 try," making frequent stops between Orizaba and the Isthmus of 

 Tehuantepec. He was impressed particularly with the rubber 

 prospect in the region surrounding Santa Lucretia, on the isth- 

 mus. He writes: "There are many groves of cultivated rubber 

 containing from 100,000 to 1,000,000 trees. While most of this 

 is young, the trees from 5 to 8 years from seed are being tapped 

 with very satisfactory results. In this section there are many 

 wild rubber trees that have escaped the axe of the native." 



Joaquin Miller, of California — the venerable "Poet of the Sier- 

 ras" — is now something of a rubber planter. He owns a ranch in 

 Mexico, where he spends his winters, and rubber is one of the 

 crops under cultivation. 



THE MACHETE TOR TAPPING RUBBER. 



The machete as a tapping tool has many friends and an in- 

 creasing number of enemies. The native rubber gatherer, of 



Rubber Tree Cut by a Machete. 



[Castilloa tree tapped in June, 1905. Photographed April 10, 1906.] 



course, believes in it because it's the only tool that he understands 

 for any purpose. In certain sections it seems that whatever he 

 does to the Castilloa trees, for example, is productive of no harm. 



