January 1, 19201 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



249 



Para Rubber in Mexico — Some Reminiscences. 



By J. L. Hermessen, F.R.G.S. 



THE SPKCIAL coNTRiBi TioN in the October number of The 

 India Rubber World, under the heading "Rubber in the 

 State of Vera Cruz, Mexico," has suggested to me the pos- 

 sible interest of some notes regarding Para rubber in Mexico, 

 liy reason, parlicularly, of the mention of the plantation EI 

 Palmar, owned by EI Palmar Rubber Estates, Limited, of Glas- 

 gow, Scotland. This property possesses the distinction of being 

 (or, since its very existence now is questionable, one should 

 perhaps better say, having been) the pioneer in the experimental 

 cultivation of Hcvca brasilicus-is in Mexico. While many others, 

 in the several and often far separated planting districts of the 

 country (in parts of the States of Vera Cruz and Oaxaca. of the 

 Isthmus of Tehuantepcc, and of Tabasco and Chiapas on the 

 borders of Guatemala), had made tentative trials with the tree, 

 in no case within the writer's knowledge had plantings of any 

 area been attempted. 



Dr. Pehr Olsson-Scffer was quite well known to me before 

 he was connected with EI Palmar, but what is about to be 

 related belongs to the period of the late J. C. Harvey's incum- 

 bency as manager there; for by him the enterprise was initiated 

 and under his personal direction carried out. 



Mr. Harvey had long previously taken a more than plantonic 

 interest in Hcvca brasilicnsis, and in his garden at Buenaven- 

 tura, where he had formed a splendid collection of tropical 

 flora, both ornamental and economic, he raised a number of 

 specimens from seed procured from Ceylon^n the first instance, 

 I think, direct from the Government Botanical Station at Pera- 

 deniya. These, throughout the years of their growth from 

 .slender plants into mature trees of tappable age and size, had 



Hevea Brasiliensis at El Palmar. 



been the object of devoted care and study on his part, eventuat- 

 ing in a scries of systematic tapping experiments, the results of 

 which went to strengthen Mr. Harvey's belief in the suitability 

 of certain sections of the country to the introduction of the 



Amazon rubber tree, adaptable, as it had seemed in the East, 

 to physiographic conditions differing widely from those of its 

 native habitat. From Buenaventura, under date of .^pril 13, 

 1913, Mr. Marvey wrote: 



I have been spending some three weeks here, sizing up our 

 situation and I think we will go ahead and reconstruct this prop- 



He\t,a Brasiliensis Nursery at El Palmar in 1911. 



crty in cacao, col^'ee and Para rubber Para is a suc- 

 cess on wound response. I have been tapping two or three trees 

 daily for a week, and the yield increases from the single paper- 

 like shaving taken off the lower edge of the first and only inci- 

 sion. Academically, I knew all about this but, tool in hand, doing 

 and seeing results is moving, I assure you. A little arithmetic 

 comes in. Say that we cut out two dry months, April and May, 

 we have ten months ; deducting Sundays and possibly five feast 

 days — 285 tapping days — say 4 grams dry rubber per tree, or 

 1.140 kilograms per tree for the year. Cut it in two for young 

 trees, and it makes Castilloa look pretty sick. No guesswork, 

 but facts that are demonstrable. The authorities in the Orient 

 say that an expert tapper handles 800 to 1,000 trees per day. If 

 he taps only 500 per day it nets 2 kilos dry rubber per man per 

 day at 4 grams per tree, so that our wage rate still leaves a 

 handsome profit at $1 per pound, United States currency. 



A little later (I have no memorandum of the date, but it was 

 almost certainly in the month of May, because it was, as I recall 

 the height of the dry season on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec) I 

 was staying with Mr. Harvey at Buenaventura, and together, 

 for a week, we sallied forth every morning before sunrise, with 

 our tapping paraphernalia, to the ground allotted to Heira. I 

 have to regret the loss, through the vicissitudes of war years, of 

 information upon the results of our operations of which we kept 

 at the time the fullest record. Suffice it to say that they amply 

 confirmed the figures in Mr. Harvey's letter quoted above. 



The first planting of Hevea brasilicnsis at EI Palmar, on regu- 

 lar field lines, was done with stumps to the number of several 

 thousand, imported for the purpose from Ceylon. Upon arrival 

 these were put into nurseries, and after they had become accli- 

 matized and generally fairly established they were set out to 

 make their way further under conditions to which they would 

 have to accustom themselves to prove a commercially success- 

 ful culture. The proportion of plants which survived the pre- 

 liminary nursery stage was not as good as Mr. Harvey had 

 expected, and he subsequently elected to get Hevea seed from 

 Ceylon. This was sown in specially prepared nursery beds, and 

 from the time of germination to that of removal of the plants 



