90 FICUS ELASTICA. 



with very strong wooden and bamboo fences to keep out ele- 

 phants and deer, both animals being very numerous, and both 

 fond of the rubber plant. In these nurseries the plants are 

 placed three feet apart, and here they are allowed to remain 

 vmtil they are from fourteen to twenty feet high, which is 

 usually when they are three years old. They generally grow up 

 with merely one whip -shaped stem. This latter process might 

 with advantage be done away with in this country, except where 

 there are elephants. 



The system now adopted is to cut lines, twenty feet wide 

 and seventy feet apart, through the jungle, clearing everything. 

 Even very tall trees adjoining these lines should be felled, to 

 prevent drip from their leaves, and too much shade. Up these 

 lines, at every thirty - five feet, mounds, six feet high with a base 

 diameter of about ten feet, are raised, a rultber plant is planted 

 on top of each of these, care being taken to keep the top of the 

 mounds more or less flat to allow rain water to sink into them. 

 The plants are very hardy, and are generally planted with bare 

 roots, but only in the wet season will they come on ; if planted 

 during the drought they usually die. If planted in the rains a 

 tree seldom dies unless pulled out by elephants, and if there is 

 good rainy weather the leaves seldom wither on the plants when 

 transplanted. The reason that planting on mounds is con- 

 dered so good is because the plant usually sends out its roots 

 just above the earth, and these run down over these mounds 

 to get their nourishment, but great care should be taken to 

 send men every month or two to cover up these roots with 

 earth; every time this is done the plant seems to go ahead, 

 and sends out more roots and shoots. This should be done 

 until the plant is about six years of age, when it may be left to 

 take care of itself. The plant has no tap root, all roots being 

 surface feeders. This system seems to be a very great success, 

 and the trees of twelve years of age are fully as large as those 

 that were planted twenty years ago on the old system. I saw 

 several of the stockaded nurseries, but these we could avoid, 

 and put our plants out when they were two years old, and by 

 so doing I believe the trees would more quickly throw out 

 their branches, and grow into better shaped trees earlier. 



I saw quantities of rubber of all ages, from the nursery stage 

 up to those of over twenty -two years of age. Very little jungle 

 clearing is necessary as the plant grows very quickly, so it is 

 merely necessary to keep the lines more or less clear : cross - lines 

 every few hundred yards or so very greatly facilitate the superin- 

 tending of work of this kind. The roots of the rul)ber run all 

 over the surface of the ground, and twist themselves up together, 



