RUBBER PLANTING 7 



the steamer on behalf of the Indian Government, and all 

 hands were pressed into the service of collecting seeds. 

 The cargo once aboard was passed by the port authori- 

 ties as botanical specimens, and upwards of 70,000 seeds 

 were thus safely transported to Kew. Less than 

 4 per cent, of these seeds, however, germinated. The 

 writer has Mr Wickham's personal assurance that these 

 seeds came from full-sized forest trees actually being 

 worked for rubber, which grew at a considerable distance 

 from the river on forest-covered plateaux some hundreds 

 of feet above flood-level. The often repeated statement 

 that the parents of the rubber plantations had their 

 origin in swampy ground liable to floods, may therefore 

 be taken to be entirely without foundation. 



Although the Government of India paid all the 

 expenses connected with the introduction of Wickham's 

 seedlings, Ceylon was selected as the site of their chief 

 tropical nursery. A special garden at Henaratgoda, in 

 the low country near Colombo, was opened to receive 

 them, and here were set out some 2000 plants which 

 arrived in Ceylon in 1876 in 39 Wardian cases by the 

 s.s. Duke of Devonshire. 



In the same year smaller consignments of plants of 

 Hevea brasiliensis were despatched from Kew to Burma, 

 Java, Singapore, and the West Indies. In 1877 plants 

 were sent to Mauritius and West Africa, and in 1878 to 

 Fiji. 



Plants of Hevea Spritceana were first sent to Ceylon 

 in 1883, but they do not appear to have survived. 



