August i, 1907] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



3i7 



The Crude Rubber Field. 



BALATA AND RUBBER IN BRITISH GUIANA. 



TWli pi>ssil)iliiu> of Briti.-li Guiana as a ruhla-r producing 

 country have received considerable attention, according to 

 a report on that colony in a recent Parliamentary paper. 

 Rubber had been unknown as an article of export from the 

 colony until two years ago, when a few hundred pounds were 

 collected, and in the fiscal year 1905-06 nearly 4,000 pounds were 

 exported. Already a few hundred acres have been planted with 

 native rubber trees in the Northwest district, and several appli- 

 cations for concessions for ruli!)cr culture have been made to the 

 government. 



Balata has long been collected in important amounts in British 

 Guiana, and owing to carelessness in the use of terms, has been 

 referred to sometimes as "rubber." The colonial report quoted 

 above says : "The highest recorded amount of balata was ob- 

 tained during the year. The price at which it was selling being 

 good, there was increased activity by all the licensees." The 

 exports of this gum by fiscal years have been (in pounds) : 



1897-98.... 490,443 1900-01 425.371 1 903-04.... 539,498 



1898-99 468,569 1901-02 387,576 1904-05 501,509 



1899-00 237,824 1902-03 540,800 1905-06 550,691 



* * * 



An action at law was instituted on May 4, 1907, at Demcrara 

 against the governor of British (juiana and the colonial commis- 

 sioner of lands and mines by George Simpson Pitcairn, an engi- 

 neer, and the British Guiana Rubber Corporation, Limited, seek- 

 ing a mandamus to cause to be issued to the plaintiffs a license 

 for collecting Hevea rubber and balata gum in certain areas for 

 a term of years. Pitcairn claims to have had the promise of 

 such license or concession and to have paid the legal fees re- 

 quired, and on September 27, 1906, the British Guiana Rubber 

 Corporation, Limited, was registered in London, with £60,000 

 capital, for the purpose of exploiting the concession. A prospec- 

 tus having been issued by the new company, the British colonial 

 office issued a notice that no final undertaking to grant the 

 licenses referred to had been made at the date of the prospectus, 

 and that "those licenses have not been, and will not be, granted 

 to the British Guiana Rubber Corporation. Limited." 



Pitcairn's suit involves a claim for damages based upon esti- 

 mated results from working the concession : "Net profits on the 

 collection of rubber and balata for 5 years, on the bleeding of 

 30,000 trees yielding 6 pounds per tree per annum, at 72 cents 

 per pound." 



A later report is that the Full Court of the colony has decided 

 this case in favor of Governor Hodgson, which is regretted by 

 the Georgetown Argosy as tending to discourage enterprise in 

 the colony. 



Sir Frederic M. Hodgson, the governor, and his codefendant 

 have filed an answer to the suit. They admit that the license to 

 Pitcairn was approved in council, but it was not approved by the 

 governor. They allege that the governor did not know Pitcairn 

 as the agent of the rubber corporation and the governor had no 

 dealings with the corporation, and they claim that a writ of 

 mandamus will not lie against the governor, who is responsible 

 for his official acts only to the Crown. The governor has been 

 strongly appealed to by leading citizens to grant the concessions. 

 The matter has even been brought to the notice of the British 

 colonial oflice, which "considers it undesirable" that the Pitcairn 

 action should be settled out of court. 



* ♦ * 



British Gui.\n.\ is to have a rubber experimental station, for 

 which public funds have been voted, with a view to deciding 

 what rubber species is best adapted to culture in that colony. 

 One matter to be taken in hand is to find out which of the vari- 



eties of Siipium is the best producer of rubber. Several years 

 ago Mr. Jenman, the government botanist, reported on the native 

 rubber species of the colony, referring particularly to the Hevea 

 Spruccana as a rubber tree of value. 



"LANDOLPHIA DAWEI" AS A RUBBER PLANT. 



Of the several rubber producing plants discovered in recent 

 years in Uganda by Mr. W. T. Dawe, of the scientific depart- 

 ment at Entebbe, one species of I.aiidolphni is regarded as of 

 exceptional value. It has been designated Landolphia Dawei. 

 It furnishes an excellent rubber, specimens of which, sent to 

 London, were valued at only 6d. [ = 12 1-6 cents] below the best 

 Ceylon plantation rubber at the same date. The vines grow 

 rapidly under cultivation. At a botanic garden at Monte Cafe, 

 island of St. Thomas, some specimens were grown under the 

 belief that they were the Landolphia Horida. At five years they 

 had reached a height of 25 meters [=82 feet] ; at 12^ years one 

 specimen, height not given, measured 13 inches in diameter at 

 the ground. 



It was once generally believed that the Landolphia Aorida fur- 

 nished good rubber, but nearly all later authorities have declared 

 the vine useless, the product obtained from the latex being at 

 first sticky and becoming hard and brittle on keeping. The only 

 recent evidence in favor of Landolphia Horida, it now appears, 

 was due to the inaccurate identification of certain plants at 

 Monte Cafe and elsewhere, now acknowledged to be really 

 Landolphia Dated. The worthlessness of Landolphia Horida as 

 a source of rubber may be regarded as fully established. 



Landolphia Daxvci, by the way, has been found as far west as 

 Kamerun, and is considered likely to prove one of the most 

 valuable of the Landolphias, on account of the rapid growth and 

 liberal yield of rubber. Mr. Dawe's explorations have also 

 established the fact that Fttntumia clastica, the West African 

 rubber tree, extends eastward into Uganda. 



NOTES. 



The Editor of The India Rubber World has received a 

 sample of a shrub or vine that grows very freely in French 

 Congo and is known as grass or herb rubber and belongs to 

 the Landolphia family. \ curious thing about the shrub is, that 

 unlike guayule, the rubber appears in the dried bark, not in solu- 

 tion in the cells, but coagulated, so that when a stalk is broken 

 hundreds of filaments of rubber are shown. The rubber ex- 

 tracted from this shrub is excellent. 



The discovery is reported of an abundance of "manigoba" 

 trees (Manihot Glaciovii, or Ceara rubber) along the Parnahyba 

 river, in the Brazilian state of Piauhy. 



The chief of the bureau of forestry in the Philippines, Major 

 George P. Ahern, is quoted by a correspondent of the Chicago 

 Daily News as saying that before the American occupation 

 400.000 pounds of gutta-percha were exported in a single year 

 from Cottabato, in the island of Mindanao. The Americans 

 placed restrictions upon the trade as a military necessity, but 

 Major Ahern says that the gutta-percha export is reviving, and 

 that as much as $1,000 has been collected at Cottabato in a month 

 under the law taxing exports at 10 per cent of the current selling 

 price. 



In the British protectorate of Southern Nigeria, West .Africa, 

 rubber is being planted systematically under government aus- 

 pices. Something like 1,000,000 plants have been set, and they 

 were reported lately to be doing well. 



Henri Yves, inspector of agriculture for French West Africa, 

 recently estimated that the planting of rubber in that government 

 by the end of 1906 embraced about 4,000,000 lianes and 250,000 

 trees, and that the figures by the end of this year would reach 

 5,000,000 lianes and 500,000 trees. 



