( 80 ) 



roots round trunk .... .... 89 feet 



Area covered by crown .... 573 do 



Aerial roots 59, the three thickest being, respectively, 5 feet 

 6 inches, 4 feet 7 inches, and 3 feet 10 inches. 



These were all said to be seedlings of two years old when 

 obtained from Mogoung in 1856, which would have made them 

 about nineteen years old when measured by me . Not much reliance , 

 however, should be placed on this information, for I much question 

 whether any one here was sufficiently interested with their intro- 

 duction to have been impressed with the date on which they were 

 planted. They have never been transplanted since first established 

 in the ground they now occupy, which is a well-drained elevation 

 of yellow clay, resting on a blue sub-stratum of the same formation. 

 Their present unhealthy, exhausted appearance, has resulted from 

 excess of tapping and indiscriminate amputation for cuttings 

 which are planted along the suburban roads, where they thrive 

 capitally. Cuttings of three years' growth average nine feet high, 

 with a handsome well-formed crown, and stem one foot three inches 

 in circumference. It is questionable, however, whether the parent 

 trees will survive such unnatural treatment much longer. Neither 

 season nor system is observed in tapping, but whenever the Gov- 

 ernor receives instructions from the Palace to collect caoutchouc, 

 orders are issued to indent on these trees, and the operation is per- 

 formed by hacking them all over, and collecting the milk in 

 hollow, pen-fashioned bamboo tubes that are driven into the lower 

 end of the cut, which generally is made obliquely with the limb 

 operated on. The people about here tell me, from December 

 to March is the best season for tapping, but that during the rains 

 the flow of milk is more copious, though the yield of the coagulated 

 substance is less. Two years ago these trees are said to have sup- 

 plied 60 viss of caoutchouc per annum, but now not more than 35 

 viss a year is reckoned on. These statements, however, must be 

 taken for what they are worth, for the Burmans are ever ready with 

 an answer, and have a decided turn for invention, which often car- 

 ries a certain amount of weight from the plausible, well-measured 

 manner in which the information is tendered. 



153. The Kesidency, which has been built at the expense of 

 Detailed description of the our Government, occupies a capital 

 Bhanio Kesidency. position on a piece of rising ground 



about two miles above the town. It is fronted by the river, and at 

 the back — at a distance of some two miles — is a bold range of 

 mountains rising to an altitude of perhaps 5,000 feet. The archi- 

 tecture is of the Anglo-Burmese type, but as I cannot say much in 



