CEARA UrBBER 83 



exudes. During my stay on his plantation, 

 Captain Cardozo very kindly permitted me to con- 

 duct some tapping experiments. I set to work 

 with nine natives, none of whom had ever tapped a 

 rubber-tree before. We tapped one morning from 

 7 till 11 a.m., and in the afternoon of the same 

 day from 2.30 till 5.30. During this period 65 

 tappings were made from some 45 trees, which 

 yielded 357 grammes of wet rubber. Sixty-five 

 tappings may be taken as a day's work for one 

 trained num, though one man will tap anything 

 from 50 to 400 trees according to the time of the 

 year and the system of tapping in vogue at the par- 

 ticular plantation at which he works. A daily 

 task on a plantation is usually 350 grammes of 

 rubber. This experiment, if it is worth anything, 

 indicates a very fair tlow of latex, especially as 

 the tapping season was at that time over and that 

 the month, October, was most unfavourable for 

 tapping, half of the trees having no leaves on. 

 The long midday interval was rendered necessary 

 by the fact that the latex would not flow during the 

 hot hours but beaded at the incisions. The trees 

 were four years old. The rubber was of excellent 

 quality, clean and tough. In the afternoon I was 

 compelled to leave the natives to carry on by them- 

 selves. From this brief trial, and from the far more 

 exhaustive experiments of Captain Cardozo, and 



