54 



RUBBER PLANTING IN CEYLON 



table with a hand roller and much of the water thus expressed. The 

 name of the estate is then stamped upon it with either a wooden or metal 

 die, when it is ready for the heater room. The heaters used are simply 

 charcoal ovens, the rubber being spread on wire screens above the fire, 

 and left for three or four hours. By this time the pancakes have lost 

 about 50 per cent, in weight and are beginning to assume a decidedly 

 darker hue. Cakes in the condition described, if in South America, would 

 be immediately marketed, but not in Ceylon. From the heaters they go 

 to drying racks, where they are air dried for a month or six weeks, the 



RUBBER CURING HOUSE, CULLODEN. 



time depending somewhat upon the weather, and are shipped only after 

 careful examination as to quality and dryness. The care which the 

 planters are expending upon the preparation of the rubber is the best 

 sort of guarantee that the quality will be sustained, and that the day 

 will come when the name of a plantation on a cake of rubber will tell 

 its value almost to a penny. To follow the rubber a little further, it is, 

 when perfectly satisfactory to the planter, packed in chests, the counter- 

 part of the regulation tea chest, made of "momi' 7 wood that comes in 

 shocks from Japan, each package containing about two hundred pounds. 

 There is also a coarse rubber that is secured by picking the scrap 

 from tapped trees. It is a very excellent rubber, and while I was there 

 it found a market at 3$. 5-Jrf., while the fine was bringing 45. gd. There 



