90 MOZAMBIQUE 



Company also. The rubber is in the trees, but 

 it beads out and will not flow. In such countries 

 a totally different system might be tried with 

 the cultivation of Ceara : a system based on the 

 cutting down of the whole tree except the lower 

 part of the trunk, stripping the bark and passing 

 it through rubber-extracting machines. This 

 system might be worth a trial even in countries 

 like Quelimane, where the rainfall is probably 

 sufficient for ordinary tapping operations to be 

 conducted for nine months in the year. Under 

 such a system trees should be planted about a 

 yard apart and allowed to grow into a thicket. 

 They coppice well, and a crop of cuttings could be 

 expected every year or two years, according to 

 climate and season. No doubt many difficulties and 

 disappointments would be encountered under a 

 new system, and extensive operations would not be 

 undertaken till trials on a small scale had first 

 been made, but no tree seems better adapted than 

 the Ceara to new changes such as the invention of 

 rubber-extracting machinery seems likely to effect. 

 Manihot dicliotoma has been planted in Queli- 

 mane, but these trees are small, the latex 

 sluggish, and their appearance did not suggest 

 that they possessed anything like the value for 

 the countries as Glaziovii.* 



* See appendix for notes on Oeara rubber. 



