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investigation, more scientific work in regard to the factors 

 that may possibly be concerned in this matter of variability; 

 and here I would plead that this investigation will hardly 

 benefit immediately, at all events any one group of planters 

 or any one association that may be doing scientific work on 

 the subject. We must, I think, if we are to achieve our ends 

 in the shortest time, throw our results into a pool. There 

 must be, at least on such fundamental questions as variability, 

 and of the ultimate factors concerned in the quality of planta- 

 tion rubber there must be, if we are to achieve our ends as 

 quickly as we should, an interchange of results between 

 different workers in the subject. There has been in the past, 

 I think, too much secrecy with regard to the conduct of work 

 on these more fundamental issues of the rubber industry. The 

 quality of rubber, the ultimate quality, and its variability, are 

 dependent so far as we know upon such extraordinarily subtle 

 considerations the character and state of aggregation of the 

 caoutchouc, and so forth that it must inevitably mean that 

 a large amount of scientific work will have to be done, and will 

 have to be freely exchanged between the different scientific 

 workers, and discussed between them, if we are to put the 

 industry on a stable basis. With regard to the question of 

 how the variability is to be attacked, we have had an extremely 

 interesting suggestion made in recent months for the founda- 

 tion of a testing station. Now I think, contrary to the remarks 

 of the last speaker, that what is the most urgent and important 

 requirement of the present day in regard to the question of 

 rubber is that we shall get over the question of variability 

 before we begin to direct our attention more particularly to 

 achieve high quality, and it is from the point of view of attack- 

 ing this question of variability that that testing station will be 

 chiefly valuable at present. When a manufacturer is able, by 

 consulting the figures, to see the results obtained for different 

 lots of rubber at the testing station, when he is able to pick 

 out samples from the monthly or fortnightly returns, and to 

 have before him all the other figures which would be produced 

 according to the scheme which Dr. Schidrowitz laid before the 

 Rubber Growers' Association, when he is able week after week 

 to pick out samples of rubber which he knows will behave 

 exactly in the same way, we shall have done a great deal to 

 attack the question of variability. But also remember, not only 

 must the question be attacked at this end, but it must be very 

 vigorously attacked in the East. It would be a mistake, I 

 think, to lay the sole emphasis on the question of the advis- 

 ability of selling rubber at this end according to the results 

 obtained at the testing station. We must make vigorous 

 researc'h into the factors concerned in variability, by each 



