CEARA RUBBER CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE 

 IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 



By R. D. ANSTEAD, M.A. 



Planting Expert, Agricultural Department, Madras, and 

 Scientific Officer to the United Planters' Association 

 of Southern India. 



THE Ceara rubber tree (Manihot Glaziovii) grows like 

 a weed all over the East, but until recently it could not 

 be made to give a large enough yield to be much taken 

 up, though it will grow at higher elevations and under 

 drier conditions than the more popular Hevea rubber. 

 It grows well from 800 to 5,000 ft. altitude, and requires 

 about 50 in. of rain, and it delights in four or five months 

 of dry, hot weather. It is intolerant of heavy wind, but 

 grows very rapidly, making shoots of 18 ft. or more from 

 seed in a single year. 



In Southern India this variety of rubber is chiefly 

 cultivated in Goorg, the Mysore State, and the Shevaroy 

 Hills, in the Madras Presidency, on a plantation scale. 

 It was first introduced into Mysore about 1880 as a shdde 

 tree for coffee, but it proved unsuitable for this purpose, 

 and was soon cut out. Since then, until comparatively 

 recent years, Ceara has been regarded with a good deal 

 of undeserved contempt as a profitable source of rubber, 

 due to the fact that, owing to wrong methods of mani- 

 pulation, large numbers of the trees died when they were 

 subjected to tapping. This difficulty has now been over- 

 come, and since 1904 Ceara rubber has been extensively 

 planted, and there now exist some 12,000 acres of it in 

 Coorg, 3,000 acres in Mysore, and 2,000 acres in the 

 Shevaroy Hills. 



Most of the experimental work with this variety of 

 rubber with which I have been associated during the last 

 five years has been done in Coorg on the estates of 



