n6 RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 



tion, but from a plant lover's interest alone, which they seemed to 

 appreciate by growing luxuriantly. 



Then, too, I must not forget the collection of orchids that hung 

 from the bamboo lattice outside of the house, and clung to the trees 

 on all sides; nor the orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, banana, and plan- 

 tain trees, a notable part of the garden equipment. I looked with 

 interest also on the vanilla vines, the cacao plantation, and the twenty- 

 five varieties of pineapples, but my chief thought was rubber, and so 

 I soon found, was his. I do not wish to make my planter friend blush, 

 but when I found the work he was doing, how widely he was consulted 

 by planters both in Mexico and in distant tropical lands, I was more 

 than ever impressed with my wonderful luck in thus "striking oil" when 

 first I began to bore. So I asked questions, and questions, and questions, 

 and took notes most copiously all the time. 



One of the first points that I wanted settled was, whether here or 

 elsewhere, there were Castilloa trees, either wild or cultivated, that did 

 not yield latex. So we both started out to find one such tree, by cutting 

 the outer bark indeed, during all of the trip, I cut trees by the hundred 

 just to prove this point but found none except in one instance. I was 

 much interested also to note the differences in the latex as it issued forth. 

 In some instances the tree would send out a perfect shower of milk- 

 white drops, which coagulated rather slowly, while another near by 

 would exude a thicker fluid that began to coagulate almost immediately. 

 The natives claim that this latter tree is simply so rich in rubber that 

 it retards the flow, and that after a little tapping, it corrects itself and 

 the latex becomes more fluid. 



The younger trees gave out abundant latex, but those that were 

 less than four years old gave a milk that seemed immature ; that is, it 

 did not coagulate into dry, hard rubber but remained quite sticky. I 

 noted also a curious thing in connection with this, which was that in 

 the younger trees the latex began to mature first near the base of the 

 tree, while up towards the branches it still remained of the sticky sort. 

 But we found no trees in this district that did not yield latex abundantly. 



At La Buena Ventura I was able to institute some exceedingly 

 interesting comparisons between the growth of the rubber tree under 

 favorable and unfavorable conditions. In both cases the trees were 

 Castilloas, planted- from selected seed. In the first instance they were 

 planted in the open, about nine feet apart, on rolling land which had 

 good drainage. Measuring the circumference of the trunks a foot above 

 the ground, I got a fair average of 23.3 inches, and an estimated average 



