80 MOZAMBIQUE 



may be quite different from what it is in another 

 a few hundred miles away. As we are but at 

 the dawn of rubber cultivation, there is a danger 

 of the Government and the public being misled 

 by people who pose as "rubber experts" ; but 

 the truth is it is necessary to approach the ques- 

 tion of the cultivation of Ceara rubber in the 

 Province of Mozambique from the point of view 

 of learners, deriving what profit is possible from 

 the experience of other countries, but prepared 

 to find that all sorts of peculiarities are likely to 

 manifest themselves with a change of soil and 

 climate. 



It has been said of the Ceara rubber-tree in 

 German East Africa that you cannot kill it, 

 but on the poorer soils of Inhambane the trees 

 after eight or ten years begin to die back from 

 the top. They should be planted only on the 

 red or grey soils, not on the low maslionga or 

 the white sandy soils. Even on the red soils a 

 good stand of young trees cannot be relied upon. 

 Captain Cardozo drills his seeds in like maize, in 

 rows 4 metres apart, and then weeds out, his 

 experience being that 90 per cent, of trees 

 planted turn out to be weak, and never grow to 

 any size. He prefers trees with the old leaf 

 nodes or rings close together, the latex being 

 always richer from them. 



