70 EXPLOITATION OF PLANTS 
About 1875 an expedition was despatched to the 
Amazon by the Indian Government, under Mr. Wick- 
ham, at the advice of Kew. At about the same time 
the seeds of other rubber trees were also collected in 
different parts of the world. A few score of plants were 
raised at Kew, and sent to the East in charge of a special 
gardener. The bulk were sent to Ceylon, and ‘the rest 
to Singapore, although the cost was met by the Indian 
Government, for experience of the climate in which 
the tree was native showed that it could hardly be 
matched in India. The seedling plants were estab- 
lished in the botanic gardens in both countries, and 
public interest in them ceased for about twenty years. 
In the interim, rubber cultivation went off along what 
has proved to be a side line. The seeds of the rubber 
tree of North-east Brazil, Manihot ~Glaziovit, whose 
produce is largely exported from the state of Ceara, 
and which is known in trade as Ceara rubber, had been 
brought to Ceylon about the same time, and proved to 
grow like weeds. In the early eighties, when coffee 
was failing, this tree, which seeded freely, was taken 
up by a good many planters, and for some time there 
was a small export of the rubber from Ceylon. What 
was chiefly against the Ceard tree was the fact that 
its yield was disappointingly small, while at the period 
the price of rubber on the market was but low—two 
conditions which, as we shall see, were almost exactly 
reversed at the period of the incoming of the Pard 
rubber. The cultivation, therefore, never spread to 
any great extent, and gradually fell away to almost 
nothing. 
To return to the Parad rubber; about twelve years 
