32 THE WHOLE ART OF RUBBER-GROWING 



sivc experiments was, however, inaugurated in the 

 Ceylon Gardens by that rare enthusiast, Dr. Trimen, 

 whose work has been so worthily carried on by a 

 band of devoted successors that the whole world of 

 plantation rubber may be said without exaggeration 

 to have been created by the small staff of clever, 

 brainy men at Peradeniya and Heneratgoda. Here 

 to-day are to be seen the parents of those millions of 

 trees — veritable boles of gold — which are rapidly con- 

 verting Malaya and Ceylon into botanical Golcondas, 

 and in themselves providing living evidence of the 

 enormous possibilities of the new industry. In the 

 early stages of their existence these trees were only 

 tapped ever} other year. Now — weather permitting 

 — they are tapped not even every other day but every 

 day, Sundays included. The system employed was 

 that of the small open V — now absolutely discarded. 

 The work must have been very clumsily done, for the 

 bark of the tree continually expanded and became so 

 gnarled and blistered that it was almost impossible 

 to tap it for nearly six years. At the end of that time 

 " high tapping " by means of ladders and scaffold- 

 ing became the fashion, many excisions being made 

 full 30 feet from the ground. So far as the actual 

 yield of latex was concerned, the experiment was 

 satisfactory, but the work was slow and the cost 

 quite prohibitive when applied to any considerable 

 area of ground. 



Then came the full herring-bone, full spiral, half- 

 herring-bone and half-spiral systems, all of which 

 applied to the tree the dangerous necessity of bark 

 excision, instead of that safe and simple method of 



