I2 PARA RUBBER. 



material for the large factories for five years and the smaller 

 ones for three years. 



The exports of Ceara or Manitoba rubber, another important 

 South American product, are reported to be increasing. Until 

 the last two or three years it was generally supposed that 

 Manihot Glaziovii, Muell. Arg., furnished this product, but it 

 now transpires that at least three other species of Manihot 

 contribute. Ule* has decided to distinguish the new species 

 as M. heptaphylla, M. piauhyensis, and M. dichotoma; he 

 estimates that the present annual yield of rubber from these 

 three species is 500 tons, 600 tons, and 400 to 500 tons 

 respectively. 



African rubber is principally obtained from the west coast and 

 the Congo, which furnished 18,000 tons in 1904, 17,500 tons in 

 1905, 17,200 tons in 1906, and 17,000 tons in 1907. Here we 

 find a falling off of 1,000 tons in four years, or an annual decrease 

 of 8 per cent. 



The most important rubber-yielding plants in these regions 

 are Funtumia elastica, Stapf, which is a large forest tree, and 

 various creepers belonging to the Natural Order Apocynaceae. 



Four years ago I was able to point outf that the imports of 

 rubber into the United Kingdom from the British West African 

 colonies, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, and Southern 

 Nigeria, decreased from 4,715 tons in 1898 to 924 tons in 1902, 

 and that this was largely due to the extirpation of rubber-pro- 

 ducing plants by the drastic tapping methods in vogue. 



The imports of rubber into the United Kingdom from these 

 four colonies in 1906 were 2,461 tons, a decrease of nearly 50 

 per cent, in nine years. 



So far as the Congo State is concerned, it would appear that 

 energetic efforts are being made to replace any plants destroyed 

 by ruthless tapping. Regulations now in force stipulate that fifty 

 rubber plants should be planted for every 100 kilos, of rubber 

 extracted. H.B.M. Consul reports : " The rubber plantations 

 in the Congo State now contain over ten million plants ; of these 

 nine-tenths are vines and the remainder trees, of which the oldest 



* " Der Tropenpflanzer," Dec. 1907. 



t Reports on rubber in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, Colonial 

 Reports, Miscellaneous, 1904. 



