208 GTJTTA-PRODUCING TBEES. 



product, and the trees which produced it, such as might enable the 

 eminent men of science at the Head of the Boyal Institutions of 

 Kew, Ceylon and Calcutta to botanically identify them. 



3. Mr. Weiy has zealously and successfully carried out the 

 instructions he received, and complete specimens of several 

 species have been made available, and their receipt cordially 

 acknowledged, and others are in course of preparation. 



4. In addition to this, Mr. Weat's scientific training has 

 enabled him to discover that, by the wasteful means of collecting, 

 which alone have been hitherto practised, by far the greater part of 

 the valuable product for which the tree is destroyed remains in the 

 bark which is left to rot in the jungle, so that not more than the 

 merest fraction is made available for the demands of commerce. 



5. The process necessary for extracting the whole of the gutta, 

 Mr. Wbay describes as simple maceration of the fresh bark shred 

 into thin slices, or of the bark dried and pounded, a process so pro- 

 ductive of valuable results that he considers the quantity exported 

 from the Straits Settlements might have been gathered from one- 

 thirtieth of the number of trees which, it is estimated, must have 

 been destroyed to produce it. 



6. In Perak, the larger trees had been destroyed before my 

 attention was attracted to the manner in which it was collected. 

 The quantity exported was rapidly diminishing, when, in 1880, I 

 advised the G-overnment, as the only means of preventing the 

 annihilation of the species, the young trees of which were being 

 rapidly cut down, to forbid the export altogether. 



7. Old trees had become so scarce that we had great difficulty 

 in securing flowering and fruiting specimens, and I have, as noticed 

 in the diary of my late expedition to the upper waters of the Perak 

 Eiver, ascertained that the central parts of the Peninsula cannot, 

 in all cases, as has been supposed, be trusted to produce an inex- 

 haustible supply. On the light sandy soils which prevail there, 

 none of the " getah taban " trees are seen, and the natives assured 

 me that although the kinds of India Rubber called " getah rambong" 

 (Ficus elastica) and the '.' getal'senggarip" (Willoughleia) had been 

 common, the Diclwpsis or Isonandra and the Payena, which is 

 nearly of equal value, were quite unknown, These were, how- 



