198 RUBBER AND 



Castilloa. 



As stated in Chapter I, plants of Castilloa were 

 brought successfully to Kew prior to the arrival of the 

 most important consignment of Hevea, and trials have 

 been made with the former plant in many parts of the 

 tropics, including almost every British tropical colony. 

 So far as we are aware, Castilloa has nowhere been 

 found equal to Hevea in suitability for plantation use, 

 in spite of fairly exhaustive trials in many different 

 districts. 



The home of the Castilloa tree is Mexico and 

 Central America. The total export of rubber from 

 Mexico in 1908 1909 was about 1,000,000 Ibs. Of 

 this amount, some 40 per cent, is stated to have been 

 plantation rubber. In 1910 the area of rubber planta- 

 tions in Mexico is believed to have been about 90,000 

 acres. The greater part of this area was planted 

 between 1897 and 1906. The capital involved, mostly 

 subscribed in the United States, was estimated at about 

 ^4,000,000. 



So far, these plantations have not by any means 

 fulfilled the expectations of their promoters. A yield 

 of 67 Ibs. of dry rubber per acre from six- to eight-year- 

 old trees, although gathered in at a trifling cost, is very 

 small compared with the yield from the plantations 

 of Hevea in the East. The latex from young trees, 

 moreover, contains a high proportion of resin, and the 



