THE 



WHOLE ART OF RUBBER-GROWING. 



CHAPTER I. 

 Introductory. 



EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN* PLANTATION AND TAPPING. 



T T is a fitting commentary upon the enterprise and 

 -*- wisdom of the Ceylon and Mid-East planter — 

 and inter alia upon the genius of Sir Joseph Hooker 

 and the industry of our own magnificent staff at Kew, 

 to whose initiative we owe the genesis of plantation 

 rubber — that the Brazilian Government has decided 

 among other things to preserve its own immense 

 natural resources by compelling owners of seringhals 

 to plant rubber extensively wherever estradas, new 

 or old, are being exploited. The result of this re- 

 gulation will be that in a few years an estrada at 

 present containing, say, ioo to 150 trees, all scat- 

 tered about the seringhal in an uneven, zigzag 

 fashion and showing probably only ten trees to the 

 acre, will present plantations as symmetrical as those 

 of Ceylon, standing the while as thick as the Hevea 

 brasiliensis has a mind to. Such a simple method 



