B 177 
“The milk may be extracted from the trees twice each year, 
during the rainy season ; about two months after its commence- 
ment and towards the termination, bi most propitious time being 
when the tree pus dropped its leave 
* A tree planted and cultivated uds good édnditions will give 
an annual product, after nine or ten years, of 1 pound of rubber, 
or, say 24 to 3 pounds of milk. With proper aay of the nature 
of the rubber tree, the progress of its sap, a and the fertilizers that 
might be best t for it, it is very probable that this yield would be 
greatly increased. 
* EXTRACTION OF RUBBER. 
* Until no wW, the machete has been used in Guatemala to make 
the incisions in the bark, incisions in the form of small canals 
about t fires earth of an inch wide, which receive the milk. I 
other countries (as in the East Indies) there is employed a kind 
of knife, which allows the making of an incision which is cleaner 
and better directed. 
“To extract a good quantity of milk it is not sufficient to make 
fo 
only one incision at the foot of the tree. Care should be taken 
that the bark of the tree remains intact in one continuous 
strip the entire height of one side of the tree; he entire 
circumference of the trunk were cut (even by incisions situated 
at different notes pee the tree would die within a few days. To 
avoid this danger we Rare seen the following moe pee? — 
a 
until within two metres of the first eh eh “Bach i cision 
consists of two symmetrical cuts, which autre will ver den 
thirds of the circumference of the tree, and will an angle 
45°, in order that the milk may run freely to the 1 lowest Sat 
The points of all the incisions must be in a perpen icular line, so 
that the milk from the hig Wat i edes. epe concentrating in the 
angle formed by the two cati, may run to the lowest point of the 
xt lower incision, and from there on to che following, etc., "mcd 
reaching the lowest, where it is collected, as explained further on. 
« (9.) The incision is extended to the same height of the trunk 
as indicated in the first method, but is continuous, and ndn of 
cuts, one de ase to the other, eis ays taki ing care never to 
e 
leaving vue-tliird of the bark intact. 
“Tt is useless and even dangerous to make the — so deep 
as to penetrate the woody part of the a On the contrary, great 
. eaution should be exercised to preserve the fibred- prre to the 
wood. 
“ From the point of the incision nearest the A the S is 
conducted by a canal to a receptacle of clay or 
eollected: ibus, the milk must be coagulated to obtain the solid 
product has not been decided. We limit ourselves to indicating 
the principal processes we have seen employed, 
25781 M 
