January 1, 1911.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD. 



117 



"HeVEA BrASILIENSIS" in SURINAME. 



avenues llaiikeil with Royal Palms, clumps of Blue Gum trees, 

 of Giant Bamboos and the great variety of flowering trees, shrubs 

 and vines, but it was rubber wc were in search of and rubber that 

 we found. Of Cas.lillna trees, there were the biggest four year 

 olds that I have ever seen, as large as the average eight year old 

 on many plantations. They looked curiously immature in spite 

 of their great bulk, witli temporary branches twenty feet from the 

 ground and bulging uneven trunks as if, mushroom like, they had 

 shot up in a single night. It was to the Hcvea that I turned, 

 however, for I wanted to see how it grew on drained land of 

 the Suriname type; I had good reason for this desire for it is 

 an open secret that just as the tea planters in Ceylon turned to 

 rubber while tea was still profitable, so the cocoa planters of 

 Suriname are turning to the Ilcvea BrasUiensis. 



The first plot examined was some tw'o hundred four year old>, 

 planted on broad dykes that were about twelve feet wide, be 

 tween which ran drains four feet deep. The trees were plantc; 

 along the edges of the dykes. The soil was a clayey alluvial, 

 cracked on the surface because of the four weeks of drouth 

 but still holding its moisture, and although the drains were dr> 

 the trees bore no evidence of suffering. A few of the best 

 trees were eight inches in diameter, three feet from the 



ground. Not far from here was another plot of Heveas, six to 

 seven years old, where the drainage was from five to six feet. 

 Only two of them had been tapped, the rest being kept as seed 

 producers, and tliey were certainly doing their duty. This clump 

 was right in front of the long low office buildings where the 

 director and his assistants have their headquarters. In this 

 office they shov.-cd us many samples of rubber prepared by them, 

 from tlie Brasiliensis, the Guyanensis, and the Castilloa, and also 

 gave us some very interesting photographs showing relative 

 ^rnwlhs of trees under different conditions. 



.\n experimental plot that does not exist in many botanical 

 gardens was that of the Miiiiiso/>s ghbosa, the balata tree. 

 These trees are slow of growth and it is not the present plan of 

 tlie government to attempt to interest planters in their culture. 

 It is possible, however, that some time in the future this planting 

 may be of as much interest as the gutta-percha groves of Java. 



A plot of some 200 Funtitmias with their dark healthy looking 

 leaves and their big green seed pods was also examined, but as 

 these were too young for anything but the lightest tapping no 

 records concerning their productiveness was obtained. 



Perhaps the most interesting of the rubber exhibits in the 

 Garden were the 20,000 Hevea seedlings, part of them on drained 

 and part on undrained land. The former were so much larger 

 and healthier that the most casual observer could not fail to 

 note the difference. Our guide pointed out a minor leaf disease 

 in them, but declared it was of no importance and that spraying 

 with the Bordeaux solution cured it. 



Many planters in view of the failure of Hcvea seeds that are 

 brought in from the far East, believe they would be much better 

 to import stumps. It will interest them to know that this has 

 been tried. The Botanical Department in Suriname brought in 

 80,000 stumps from Ceylon and from them secured only 4,000 

 trees. They learned further that they saved from SO to 80 per 

 cent, of the seeds that arrived in Suriname in the months of Sep- 

 tember, October, and November, but of those that came in Feb- 

 ruary, March, and April, they saved only 15 per cent. 



Genera! planting in Dutch Guiana dates back certainly 200 

 years, but rubber planting is only aboiU 12 to 15 years old. There 

 was no thought of it until the disease known as "witch broom" 

 developed on the cocoa, and the Panama and kindred diseases at- 

 tacked bananas and lessened the profits in those remunerative 

 lines. 



About 13 years ago, therefore, the Waterland estate planted 

 nine Para rubber trees, which were grown from a parcel of 

 100 seeds bought in London. Four years later certain other 

 plantations secured stumps of Hevea trees from the Botanic 

 Gardens and set them out. These stumps came from seeds that 

 the government had imported directly from Brazil. In 1905 



Dutch Negresses. 



