i?o RUBBER AND 



New York sales are by personal contract for immediate 

 delivery. In Liverpool and London, auction sales are 

 held at stated intervals after samples have been exposed 

 for a certain length of time. Private sales also take 

 place in London, and a good deal of plantation rubber 

 is now sold in advance by contract. Fortnightly 

 auction sales of rubber are also held in Colombo and 

 in Singapore. 



The Best Form of Plantation Rubber. 



We have seen that plantation rubber is placed upon 

 the market in a variety of different forms, among which 

 biscuit, sheet, crepe and block are the most familiar. 

 Any of these forms may be either smoked or unsmoked, 

 and the unsmoked varieties may differ much in colour ; 

 whilst the thickness and other characteristics of the 

 different types also vary considerably. It is a curious 

 fact that whilst one of the principal demands of the 

 manufacturer is for uniformity in the product which 

 he buys, the present diversity is partly due to the 

 failure of the manufacturers to make up their minds 

 which type they prefer. In this way a vicious circle is 

 established, and the desire of the producer to turn out 

 a uniform product is partly frustrated by the buyer. 

 On the other hand, it must be admitted that similar 

 grades of rubber, when produced on different estates 

 and from trees of different ages, appear to differ con- 

 siderably in strength and resiliency. 



