158 THE RUBBER INDUSTRY 



a sickle, and periodically the leaves are swept up and 

 taken away, Henaratgoda being a botanic garden to be 

 kept tidy. This is the treatment these trees have been 

 subjected to. There is a river close by, but this does 

 not enable the inside congested trees to give more than 

 I '4 pounds per annum. We are driven to the conclusion 

 that the controlling factors have been air, light, and 

 root room, these trees having had room at least on one 

 side to extend. 



It has not escaped some observers that Hevea trees 

 growing in pairs do not seem to suffer from the fact, 

 and at the meeting of the Committee of Agricultural 

 Experiments held at Peradeniya on March 16 it was 

 decided to lay out a plantation to test this principle. 

 Fig. i (p. 156) is a plan of a plantation based on this 

 principle, but carried one step farther, four trees being 

 planted closely together (10 feet by 10 feet) instead of 

 two. Two would perhaps be better than four, and 

 one than two; but the Henaratgoda trials afford good 

 grounds for expecting a plantation laid out on the four- 

 square plan illustrated in Fig. i would be in time return- 

 ing heavy yields as compared with present standards. 

 It gives every tree room to extend freely on two sides. 



Tables V., VI. and VII. give interesting comparisons 

 of the proportion of latex to dry rubber in the various 

 trees. In the great No. 2 tree the latex is rich, though 

 one or two trees showed a slightly higher proportion 

 of rubber. With the old original trees a mean of 

 1,253*44 c.c. of latex produced i pound of dry rubber; 

 with those of the Second Plantation, 1,330*88 ; the 

 Riverside, 1,416*96. Taking the figures of the old 

 trees as unity, the proportions may be represented as 



