RUBBER. 
By Epear BECKETT. 
Probably no agricultural product, within recent years, has ever attracted so 
much attention and had so catholic a consideration, as has the substance known 
as ‘‘ India Rubber.” 
It is now quite one hundred and thirty years ago, that Priestley recognised the 
fact that rubber was useful for removing pencil marks, while brave old Columbus 
was probably the very first European who ever set eyes upon the now familiar 
balls of rubber, when he discovered the Indians at play in their leisure hours. 
These observations, however, would have led to nothing were it not for 
Goodyear’s discovery of vulcanisation; we owe a deep debt of gratitude to 
Goodyear, for there is not the slightest doubt but that for this discovery of his, 
the gigantic strides rubber production has made in the commercial and plant- 
ing world, could never have been accomplished. It is a grand leap, from 
removing pencil marks to the International Rubber Exhibition to be held in 
1911! 
There has always been an air of romance wrapped round rubber. Here we 
have Columbus and other intrepid explorers, finding Indians playing at games 
with rubber balls, and to-day, after a space of over four hundred years, we may 
yet see Indians in the upper reaches of our rivers, using balls of Sapiwm Jenmani 
rubber in their games. 
“* Ball-play * has long been recognized as a form of amusement common 
to all primitive races. 
Indeed, we think we are correct in stating, that it was this habit which 
attracted the attention of the late Mr. G. S. Jenman and Sir Everard im Thurn, 
and caused them to investigate the possibility of utilising this substance as a 
product of commercial value. 
Again when we read the history of the starting of the rubber industry in 
Ceylon, it is as if one were perusing the pages of a romance rather than an account 
of a plain, prosaic, fact concerning the rapid rise of a commercial product. 
The interest which we are now taking in the planting of Hevea brasiliensis, 
was started in Ceylon some thirty-four years ago, as is shown by the accounts 
given in old numbers of The Kew Bulletin. 
The Kew Bulletin for 1876 mentions the fact that Mr. H. A. Wickham, of 
the Amazon valley, obtained a commission from the Indian Office to collect and 
bring to England seeds of Hevea brasiliensis. On June 14th, according to the 
same authority, this gentleman arrived in England with a collection of no less 
than 70,000 seeds, gathered by him on the Rio Tapajos. Of these, only 2,000 
plants were raised by the Kew authorities, and these were despatched to Ceylon 
in thirty-eight wardian cases. During the next year one hundred more plants 
were sent to Ceylon, so that in 1877, there were but 2,119 Hevea brasiliensis 
trees on this island. To-day the botanica] name Hevea brasiliensis is a familiar 
