38o 



METHODS OF TAPPING RUBBER TREES AND 

 COLLECTING LATEX 



A visit of inspection which 1 recently paid to the various rub- 

 ber plantations in the Federated Malay States, shewed me in a way 

 that figures and statistics could not have done the amount of labour 

 and capital that has been spent in this industry, and brought very 

 vividly home to me the great value of the plantations to the country 

 and gave me some slight idea of the wealth of return immediately 

 coming to those who have interests in these estates. But it also 

 demonstrated the state of chaos that exists in all that concerns the 

 practical harvesting of the rubber. That this should be so is inevit- 

 able, and at it no surprise can be felt when it is remembered that 

 as an agricultural industry rubber growing is in its infancy, and 

 that there is no accumulated experience gained by planters in the 

 past to serve as guide. It is true that different experiments on a 

 small scale have been made, and small amounts of rubber turned 

 out and exported, but no large estate has yet been thoroughly tap- 

 ped and no method at present in use has been put to the test of 

 practical applicability in a systematic manner to a large estate of, 

 say, 1,000 acres. I propose to review the methods that have been 

 put forward and which have in a mild and tentative manner been 

 adopted, and to endeavour in a scientific manner to critically ex- 

 amine the probability of their success on a large scale and to give 

 some scheme which as the result of this analysis may be adopted. 

 In the first place the aim of all and on this one and only point, is 

 there anything like full agreement, is to make money, that is to 

 say to obtain the greatest possible return of rubber with the least 

 possible expenditure, without doing damage to the trees, without 

 killing the goose that is to lay the golden eggs. Each system of 

 tapping therefore, must be looked at, from the three points of view, 

 namely the return of rubber, the cost of working and the probable 

 damage to the trees as sources of rubber. Aesthetic and senti- 

 mental considerations can have no place. 



The first and a simple system is that of single cuts, each being a 

 few inches long, and obliquely set. The inclination being from 20° 

 to 30° to the horizontal. At the lower end of each cut, a cup is fixed 

 by being pushed into the bark, the portion of the bark thus raised 

 acting as a lip over which the latex trickles into the cups. 



On successive or on alternate days the lower face of the cut is 

 pared off and the latex caused again to flow. This process, con- 

 tinued for about fifteen times of reopening, has with individual trees 

 yielded a large return of rubber per tree — some claim that the 

 largest returns have been obtained in this way. It is also claimed 

 that the scars heal quickly. That the returns per length of cut 

 surface are any greater with this method than with any other I very 

 much doubt. Experiments made with a few trees or with small 

 sets of trees are certainly of valuer but in so far as they are not 

 carried out u rider the same conditions of cooly labour and rate of 

 working as would obtain on a large estate in actual practice must 



