Notes on the Society's Work in 1897-1918. lix. 



some profit, during the fourth, fifth and sixth years, whilst the cacao-trees 

 are slowly coming into bearing, payable crops of ground-provisions can- 

 not be raised without very great detriment to the cacao-trees. Hence 

 cacao-growing on any scale here cannot be a poor man's industry — and 

 unfortunately in this colony it is to the poor peasant farmer we have all 

 learned to trust for progress in new industries. 



Our larger landed proprietors apparently hold that having money 

 they may lose some or all of it if they act as pioneers in new agricultural 

 pursuits, but as the small peasant farmer can have little or has not any 

 money he cannot lose much or possibly not any, and hence he is the only 

 person justified in undertaking such preliminary ventures. Still, how- 

 ever, if the smaller man can find good enough security, philanthropists 

 will lend him the funds with which to make his trials. We are indeed 

 essentially a business-community in these matters. 



Several of our larger cacao-properties more especially that, in 1897, 

 very excellent plantation Oovcrdeu received a most severe set-back when 

 they changed proprietors during the rubber-booms from 1906 to 1910 or 

 1911. Young cacao was neglected and in many cases abandoned; rub- 

 ber-trees either Sapium or Para being planted in its stead. The care of 

 the older trees, upon which the crops of cacao so greatly depend, 

 largely ceased ; drainage was not kept up, cultivation and even pruning 

 of the trees were reduced to their lowest limit, whilst cutting-down bush 

 and even ordinary weedings were more or less abandoned. Left thus to 

 nature, and the delicate cacao-trees thereby exposed to the attacks of 

 fungoid and insect pests, is it not a wonder that the cacao-industry of 

 British Guiana has merely stagnated and not been entirely lost ? 



Para Rubber. 



Probably the only person in the colony keenly interested in its 

 rubber-producing possibilities in 1896 and 1897 ws the then Govern- 

 ment Botanist, the late G. S. Jenman, who as his earlier writings prove 

 was an enthusiastic believer in the possibilities of rubber-growing on the 

 large scale in British Guiana. In 1897 there were five trees of Para 

 rubber at the Government Agency at Morawhanna, nine in the 

 Promenade Gardens, Georgetown, one only at the Botanic Gardens and a 

 dozen or so at Pin. Diamond. During 1898 and 1899 seeds were im- 

 ported from Trinidad and plants raised from them were sent to several 

 properties in different parts of the colony, principally to Noitgedacht in 

 the Canals Polder district, then the property of the late Thomas Garnett. 



Exaggerated ideas* of the value of the wild Hevea trees of the 

 colony were rife, and of these trees Sir Daniel Morris wrote in his sub- 

 sidiary report to the West Indian Royal Commission as follows: — 



'These ideas were due to an expression of opinion by Prestoe, the eminent Botanist in 

 charge of the Royal Gardens, Trinidad, in or about 1S77 that the Touokpong rubber with 

 which the Aboriginal Indians made their balls and which was occasionally brought to 

 Georgetown by them was obtained from I fere t ffuianensis, one of the true rubbber-bearing 

 trees, but which it is now known does not occur in British Guiana. It i- deserving of re lord 

 that the object of Jenman's first journey into the interior of the colony was to collect seeds 

 of the alleged Hevea Qmomenidt for the Trinidad Government. 



