410 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[September i, 1910. 



have not found it to pay ; some others have made 

 profits, and this, of itself, docs not occur to us to be 

 intrinsically wrong. The size of one of the guayule 

 companies has been spoken of in the press as a damag- 

 ing fact. It is doubtful, however, if guayule would 

 now be found on the market had not its production 

 been undertaken on such a large scale as to require a 

 great deal of capital. 



The most amazing thing in the late outbreak about 

 rubber in the daily press is the fact that in no case 

 has appeared an}- evidence of any rubber man having 

 Keen interviewed or approached for correct informa- 

 tion on the subject. Considering how many intelligent 

 men are connected with the rubber industry, and men 

 willing to supply facts regarding it, there can be no 

 excuse for such witless jumbles about rubber trusts 

 and tariffs and profits as the newspaper reading public 

 has been treated to lately. 



THE TAPPING OF "CASTILLOA." 



PLANTERS of Castilloa rubber six months ago 

 were, many of them, quite discouraged. They 

 did not acknowledge it to every one, but their trees 

 nut producing the amount of rubber annually that 

 they had counted upon. They were awakening to a 

 knowledge of the fact that they could only tap the 

 trees, once, twice, or possibly three times during the 

 year profitably. Not that it killed the tree, but it did 

 not show the same type of wound response that the 

 Hevea did. 



The remarkable rise in the price of crude rubber, 

 however, put a premium on their efforts, and many of 

 them are now making money. They have taken up 

 very seriously the subject of scientific tapping, and it 

 is a reasonable probability that the tree will eventually 

 be proved profitable from a planting standpoint. 



No man had put more thought upon this problem 

 than the late Mr. J. B. Carruthers, of Trinidad. He 

 argued that, as the tree does not show wound response, 

 it should be practically drained of latex at one tap- 

 ping, and then allowed to rest until the lactiferous 

 tubes fill up again, whether it take three months, six 

 months, or a year. Instead of stripping the bark with 

 an\- sort of cutting tool, he suggested the use of a 

 pricker that should puncture nearly every tube, an 

 apron at the foot of the tree to catch the latex, and a 

 jet of water, if necessary, as a vehicle to carry all of 

 the latex down into the apron. 



The suggestion is of much merit. Pricking the 

 Castilloa bark, every square inch of it, from the ground 

 to the first permanent branches, should not injure the 

 tree in the least. The wounds ought to heal and leave 

 practically no scar, and several times the present 

 amount of latex be secured. 



Were the problem solved along these lines it would 

 be a great boon to the thousands who have invested 



in Castilloa plantations throughout Mexico, the Central 

 American states, and the West Indies. 



For the encouragement of the Castilloa planter, the 

 following is worth pondering upon: The scientific 

 tapping of Hevea trees, for example, on the Linggi 

 plantation, produced 10.7 pounds from 12 year old 

 trees. By the native method of tapping the production 

 probably^ would have been about 3 pounds. If, there- 

 fore, the Castilloa can be tapped scientifically there is 

 no reason why a notable increase cannot be obtained 

 over that secured by the present method. 



THE PASSING OF THE "BATELAO. 



THE batelao has been passing up and down the up- 

 per Madeira and some other streams of land- 

 locked Bolivia for a long time, but very slowly. 

 Perhaps the navigation of no rivers has ever been 

 accomplished with such hardships and risk and rela- 

 tive expense. Soon we shall be able to chronicle the 

 final passage of this peculiar boat of antique type. 



On another page is given a photographic view of a 

 batelao as it appeared on the rocks over which it was 

 necessary to convey it for more than a mile around one 

 of the many cataracts which interrupt the Madeira. 

 No wonder fine Bolivian rubber has been so expensive 

 when the batelao has had to be depended upon for 

 transporting it to market. 



A new regime, however, is being ushered in by the 

 progress of the Madeira-Mamore railway, details re- 

 garding which appear in these pages in connection 

 with the picture of the batelao. The new railway has 

 begun carrying rubber, having been completed, at 

 last accounts, for 88 kilometers [=55 miles]. On June 

 26 it took on rubber at Jacy-Parana which it delivered 

 to San Antonio five hours after it was received. The 

 journey by batelao would require from five to six days 

 at double the rates charged by the railroad. When one 

 considers also the safety of transport, and the lack of 

 shrinkage, it will be seen that the old time batelao will 

 never be able to compete with the railroad, 



THE CHEMIST IN THE RUBBER INDUSTRY. 



IF one stops to think of the day when crude rubber 

 was purchased principally on the strength of its 

 general appearance, it seems hardly credible that such 

 purchases are now made to a large extent with a 

 chemists' analysis as a basis, and the day appears to be 

 not far off when this control will be developed to such 

 a degree that products possessing certain properties 

 can be made and duplicated with mathematical nicety. 

 Before the manufacturer can hope to obtain the best 

 results he must, however, forget that a chemist is an 

 "analyst," a mechanic who potters in chemicals. The 

 true chemist, the man who has taken his post grad- 

 uate course at college, is well equipped to take a "long 



