M \i;i H I, 1910.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



The Editor's Book Table. 



209 



VERSLAG OMTRENT DEN STAAT VAN HET ALGEMEEN- 



Proefstalion te Salatiga en de Daarbij Behoorende Hulp-inrichtingen 



over het Jaar 1908. [Soerabaia: G. C. T. Van Drop & Co., 1909.] 

 [Paper. 8vo. Pp. 391 + xxvm plates.] 



THIS comprehensive report on the condition of the general 

 experimental station at Salatiga, in central Java, under 

 the able direction of Dr. F. W. T. Hunger, including three 

 branch stations in various parts of the island, is one of the 

 most comprehensive and interesting reports of the kind from 

 any country or in any language. The work at these stations is 

 devoted to cacao, coffee, quinine, rubber (Ficus and Hevea), tea, 

 kola, tobacco, and agave. The work involves botany, chemistry, 

 entomology, zoology (animal pests), and study of soils. The 

 pages devoted to the culture of india-rubber, which has been 

 carried on at these stations since 1905, form an important con- 

 tribution to this subject. The volume embraces, among other 

 things, a report on the participation of the Dutch East Indies in 

 the International Rubber Exhibition in London, in 1908, by Dr. 

 A. J. Utlee, chief of the chemical department, and Dr. Pedro 

 Arens, botanical assistant for the caoutchoric department. 



It is unnecessary here to do more than to refer to the 

 thoroughness with which scientific work is carried out in the 

 Dutch colonies, as well as in the mother country. But special 

 attention is due to the 28 half-tone plates, illustrating the plant 

 of the experimental stations and results attained therein — pic- 

 tures of an excellence which we have never seen excelled in a 

 government publication, and which give a strikingly clear idea 

 of the subjects to which they relate. It is not too much to say 

 that if this were the only publication in existence on rubber cul- 

 ture, it would afford reason for confidence in the success of this 

 interest. There are 185 supporting members of this institution, 

 of whom 47 are engaged in rubber planting; there are likewise 

 many contributing members. 



* * * 



The contributions to the subject of rubber culture in Hollan- 

 dish are becoming increasingly important, which is not sur- 

 prising in view of the extension of this interest in the Nether- 

 lands East Indies. Some figures relative to this interest are 

 compiled here from a lecture to be mentioned below, the figures 

 indicating the investments in rubber planting on record in the 

 two months stated : 



In Java: 



Feb., 1909. Dec, 1909. 



Dutch companies florins 3,426,000 8,670,000 



British companies 5,820,000 17.220,000 



Belgian and French companies 6,670,000 8,800,000 



German companies 904,000 900,000 



In Sumatra, Borneo and Riouzv: 



Dutch companies 1,350,000 9,400,000 



British companies 14,254,000 13,000,000 



Belgian and French companies 7,850,000 8,600,000 



German companies 1,335,000 1,330,000 



Total florins 41,609,000 67,920,000 



Total U. S. money $16,726,818 $27,303,840 



[See The India Rubber World, June 1, 1909 — page 311.] 

 Before the Netherlands section of the Nederlandsch-Indische 

 Maatschappij van Xijverheid en Landboun (Dutch Indies So- 

 ciety of Industry and Agriculture), at a public meeting held on the 

 evening of December 22, at The Hague, a lecture on "India- 

 Rubber and its Cultivation in the Dutch East Indies" was delivered 

 by Professor Dr. P. van Romburgh, long connected with the 

 botanical gardens at Buitenzorg (Java), and now of the faculty 

 of the university at Utrecht. The lecture, which was most com- 

 prehensive, was followed by a discussion participated in by 

 Professor A. H. Berkhout, former conservator of forests in the 

 Dutch East Indies, and others interested in the subject A full 



report appears in De Indische Mcrcuur, 

 [XXXIII-i, 2; Jan. 4, 11, 1910; Pp. 1-2; 19-22. 



Amsterdam. 



IX CLOSED TERRITORY. BY EDGAR BEECHER BRONSON WITH 

 Illustrations from Photographs b •■ the Author. Chicago: A. C McClurg 

 & Co. 1910. [Cloth. Svo. Pp. xix 1- 299 + half tone plates. Price, 

 Sl-75-J 



The title chosen by our author is a term applied today 

 to a section of British East Africa which, while the most 

 attractive to the Nimrods of every country, is restricted to 

 the very few who are able to obtain licenses for shooting 

 there. Nowhere else now does "big game" abound as in 

 the territory over which Mr. Bronson has been "on safari" 

 for the past year or two, and the barriers which the gov- 

 ernment has erected against a wholesale slaughter there is 

 appreciated by the true sportsman, who recognizes the duty, 

 while enjoying the chase in 1910, of doing "his level best to 

 insure that a good supply of wild life is left for the sports- 

 man of 2010." 



This book, written primarily for American readers, by an 

 American, will be received with a fresher interest than has been 

 accorded to the books written by British sportsmen for some 

 years past, because the field is newer, from the sportsman's stand- 

 point, to people on this side of the Atlantic. But Americans no 

 less than Britishers read with rapt interest the books of David 

 Livingstone, the pioneer missionary, on this identical region. 

 Americans were first in appreciation of Henry M. Stanley's 

 triumphs as an explorer in the same part of the world, with the 

 resultant state making. And all America has watched with in- 

 terest the progress of the former President. Mr. Roosevelt, in 

 chasing big game through the same wilds. 



But in the library of East African adventure no book has ap- 

 peared which excels that of Bronson as an informing narrative of 

 a country closed to the casual traveler, lightened with a delicious 

 vein of humor. Mr. Bronson is a careful and accurate observer, 

 experienced as an explorer, and when to this is added talent in 

 describing to others what he saw, he could hardly fail to be in- 

 teresting. Moreover, the camera carried by our author has made 

 many details so plain to the reader as to render descriptive writ- 

 ing unnecessary. 



"Closed Territory," it happens, is also "rubber territory" to an 

 important extent, and Mr. Bronson's acquaintance with rubber 

 before going to Africa stood him in good stead when, in the Ma- 

 bira forest, he chanced to come upon an important enterprise in 

 the exploitation of rubber under British auspices. Not alone to 

 rubber men, but to the general reader, the chapter headed 

 "Rubbering in Uganda" is likely to prove one of the most in- 

 teresting in this unique book of travel, sport, and incidental gen- 

 eral information. 



THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF PARA RUBBER CULTIVATION. 

 The new tropical industry of the East. Bv Tohn Parkin, m.a., f.l.s. 

 Part I. [In Science Progress in tin- Twentieth Century. A quarterly 

 journal of scientific work and thought. London: John Murray. No. 15 

 — January, 1910. Pp. 393-416. Price, 5 shillings.] 



It is interesting to note the reappearance as a writer on rubber 

 cultivation of one whose contributions to scientific work in this 

 field have been so notable. Mr. Parkin was first heard of in 

 connection with rubber as scientific assistant in the Royal Botanic 

 Gardens of Ceylon, and it is worth while to recall that in his 

 recent treatise on "Agriculture in the Tropics," Dr. John C. 

 Willis, director of the Ceylon gardens, gives a large measure of 

 credit to Mr. Parkin for having worked out the theory of 

 "wound response," to which is attributed the vastly larger yield of 

 cultivated Hevea than had been known previously. Mr. Parkin, 

 in the essay now before us, naturally devotes a good deal of at- 

 tention to wound response, which he considers to be a peculiarity 



