98 KUBBEK GROWING IN PERAK. 



V - shaped incisions made with two cuts of a chisel having a wide 

 lilade of ahout an inch in breadth. These cuts, I find, heal up 

 in a very short time and do little damage to the tree, l>ut it is 

 douhtful if they will yield as much rubber as the native herring- 

 bone shape<:I cuts. Mr. Willis informs me his experiments are 

 not yet comj^lete. 



Some years back an instrument for tapping was recom- 

 mended, of the following description. A piece of wood, about 

 an inch broad and a foot or more long, had the central portion 

 set with sharp steel spikes like the hair of a brush. It was to be 

 taken in both hands by the ends, which served as handles, and 

 the spikes pressed into the bark, producing a series of punc- 

 tures through to the wood. On trial, in Perak, on the Kuala 

 Kangsar trees, it was foimd that although the sap flowed when 

 it was applied in fair quantities it stopped almost at once, as the 

 holes quickly became sealed up by the coagulation of the sap 

 within them. 



In Dr. Ct. Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of 

 India the collection of the rubber is thus described : — 



" Mr. Cross gives a detailed account of the method persut^l 

 in Para, of which the following are the main facts. The milk is 

 drained into small earthen vessels attached to the trees by an 

 adhesive clay. The contents of fifteen of these cups make one 

 English imperial pint. Arriving at a tree, the collector takes the 

 axe in his right hand, and, striking in an upward direction as 

 high as he can reach, makes a deep upward sloping cut across 

 the trunk, which always goes through the bark and penetrates 

 an inch or more into the wood. The cut is an inch in breadth. 

 Frequently a small portion of the bark breaks off from the 

 upper side, and occasionally a thin splinter of wood is also raised. 

 Quickly stooping down he takes a cup, and pasting on a small 

 quantity of a clay on the flat side, j>i-esses it to the trunk close 

 beneath the cut. By this time the milk, which is of a dazzling 

 whiteness, is beginning to exude, so that if requisite he so 

 smooths the clay that it may trickle direct into the cup. At a 

 distance of four or five inches, but at the same height, another 

 IS luted on, and so the process is continued until a row of cups 

 encircles the tree at a height of about six feet from the ground. 

 Tree after tree is treated in like manner, until the tapping 

 required for the day is finished. This work should be concluded 

 by nine or ten o'clock in the morning, because the milk con- 

 tinues to exude slowly from the cuts for three hours or perhaps 

 longer, .... the (juantity of milk that flows from each 

 cut varies, but if it is large and has not been much tapped the 



