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surprise at the marvellous growth of the trees of Para rubber which 

 he had seen in Singapore, Province Wellesley and the Malay 

 States. In the paper above citc>l he writes, u In No. 23 of the Jour- 

 nal d' Agriculture Tropicale, I remarked the more or less nearly 

 approaching exhaustion of the rubber forests of the Amazons. 



In twenty years, ten perhaps, the forests having been all dis- 

 covered and exploited, one must foresee a diminution in the return 

 of this region which can only keep uu its amount of export by means 

 of the discoverv of new virgin forests and then there will commence 

 an era of grand profit for the plantations that are now being made. " 



Now there is another factor which it seems must threaten the 

 Amazon's product, with a much nearer falling off. It is the very 

 low cost of export of the Asiatic rubber. 



In 1903 Ceylon exported 30,000 Kilograms of rubber which 

 fetched a distinctly higher price than fine smoked P.ira. One 

 might believe that this price is only exceptional and due to the 

 manufacturers being anxious to try this new class of rubber, having 

 given a favourable price for it. Doubtless this is so to a certain 

 extent but when one considers that this rubber dried before export 

 loses very little weight in the store that it is produced in the form of 

 thin translucent biscuits showing the purity of the product which 

 requires a much shorter manipulation. If we consider all these real 

 advantages, we see that the increased value of the rubber of culti- 

 vated Hevea is quite justified. But the important point is that the 

 cost of the shipping of Ceylon rubber to Liverpool is not more than 

 2 francs the Kilo., whilst that from Amazonas even if it was exported 

 by the producer in the same condition would cost at least 5 francs 

 a Kilo. The difference between these two costs is so great that 

 it leaves a margin almost sufficient for any errors of over valuation 

 in the calculations for the Ceylon rubber. 



We can thus foresee the day when the plantations in Asia will 

 put on the market thousands of tons of a rubber prepared in the 

 most careful manner at a much lower price than that of Amazonas 

 even if the Brazilian Government lowers considerably the export 

 duty on rubber. This, however, is one of its principle sources of 

 revenue. This time is not yet very near as the uses of rubber are 

 being continually increased, and the Asiatic plantations are not big 

 enough yet to produce many thousand tons of rubber. The area 

 planted with rubber, chiefly Hevea. in Ceylon is estimated at more 

 than 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) planted exclusively with rubber 

 trees and 10,600 hectares on which rubber trees are used as shade 

 trees or along edges of roads, ditches, etc., in tea and cocoa planta- 

 tions. 



If we admit in the first case there are an average of 500 trees to 

 the hectare and in the second 125 to the hectare we shall get a total 

 °f 3>35°> 000 rubber trees. If we allow according to English writers 

 that twice as much is planted in the Malay Peninsula and neighbour- 

 ing islands we shall have 6,700,000 rubber trees, altogether ten 

 million trees planted up to date. 



