Ill 



manufacturers may doubtless establish an equilibrium between sup- 

 ply and demand of raw chicle and thus indefinitely postpone the 

 time of exhaustion. 



Although it has been apparent for a number of years that the 

 present system is gradually depleting the chicle forests, no deter- 

 mined effort has yet been made towards conservation, and it is only 

 within recent years that serious attention has been directed to chicle 

 production on a plantation basis. Since the tropical forests of south- 

 ern Mexico and Central America contained at first seemingly in-, 

 exhaustible quantities of chicle that could be extracted at compara- 

 tively small expense, this attitude was to be expected, and it was 

 quite natural that no extensive effort was made to cultivate Achras 

 sapota. Sporadic small-scale attempts at cultivation have been re- 

 ported (Anonymous, 1923) from Mexico and the Far East, but 

 until two decades ago no significant efforts were made to cultivate 

 the sapodilla tree. The present status of the sapodilla tree as to meth- 

 ods of tapping, identification and selection of the best-yielding varie- 

 ties, plantation culture, etc., remind one very much of Hevea bra- 

 ziliensis in the early years of the rubber industry. Years of rubber 

 gathering in the wild were necessary before the importance of plan- 

 tation production was realized, and then followed a long period of 

 experimentation with methods of tapping, propagation, and cultiva- 

 tion, with the result that the present highly speciaHzed methods of 

 rubber culture finally emerged. In relation to plantation production 

 the chicle industry is at present in about the same stage as was the 

 rubber industry at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the 

 important exception, however, that the sapodilla tree appears much 

 less, if at all, suitable for plantation culture than Hevea hraziliensis. 



Botany Department 

 Columbia University 



Literature Cited 



Anonymous. Chicle or sapodilla "gum." Bull. Imp. Inst. 9:147-148. 1911. 

 Anonymous. Gathering chicle for the American gum chewers. Sci. Amer. 



Suppl. 88:172. Figs. 1-3. 1919. 

 Anonymous. Chicle cultivation in Mexico and the Far East. India Rubber 



World 68 :628. Three figs. 1923. 

 Bell, P. L. Chicle. Colombia. A commercial and industrial handbook. U. S. 



Dept. Commerce. Sp. Agents Ser. 206:85-87. 1921. 

 Blake, S. F. Native names and uses of some plants of eastern Guatemala and 



Honduras. Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 24:87-100. Pis. 29-33. 1922. 



