30 PARA RUBBER. 



prepared holes. It is, however, very obvious that this procedure 

 must check the plant's growth considerably. 



At several of the large estates that I visited in Ceylon, it 

 was considered the best plan to sow the seed out in the open 

 plantation, i.e., in the positions it was intended the trees were 

 to remain. This system is called " sowing to stake." At one 

 estate I saw trees grown from seeds sown to stake in 1898 

 which had developed sufficiently to be tapped at the end of 

 1902. 



No doubt this method has much to recommend it, pro- 

 viding the seeds can be sown during a season when the soil is 

 kept constantly moist by frequent rains, as the Para tree sends 

 down a long tap-root which is often broken when young plants 

 are transferred from the nursery beds to the plantation. But 

 it is much more difficult to protect young plants in the open 

 field from animal attacks than it is in the nurseries. 



If seeds be abundant, seven or eight should be sown in each 

 stand and when these germinate, all weakly, backward, or badly 

 formed plants should be thinned out and destroyed, leaving two 

 or three of the most promising. To conserve moisture in the 

 soil the seed stands should either be mulched with some light 

 material such as grass, or a small framework of palm leaves 

 should be erected over them till the plants are well established. 

 When the selected plants are about a foot high all but the 

 best plant in each stand should be rooted up and destroyed. 

 A supply of seeds should be reserved or a number of plants 

 raised in bamboo pots or baskets to supply vacancies. 



Fig. 4 shows some Para rubber seedlings, six months old, 

 growing in a nursery near Beira, East Africa. 



PROPAGATING YOUNG GROWTHS. 



It is somewhat surprising that some difficulty appears to 

 have been experienced in propagating Heveas from cuttings 

 during recent years. Large numbers of plants were raised by 

 cuttings taken from the original seedlings brought by Cross 

 from South America in 1876, and also from the first stock of 

 plants received in Ceylon. The 1906 Annual Report of the 

 Ceylon Botanical Department states with reference to an experi- 

 ment conducted at Peradeniya to raise plants from cuttings, 



