458 



These crickets are extremely destructive, and one or two seem 

 to be able to move down a great quantity of seedlings in a night. 

 A bed of melon seedlings was thus destroyed by one of these ani- 

 mals in a single night, not one seedling out of some hundreds 

 escaping. Fortunately, as a rule, these animals are not exceedingly 

 abundant, generally appearing in pairs. Their jaws are very 

 powerful and 1 have been bitten clean through the finger by one 

 I attempted to catch, which was being pursued by a large brown 

 sunbird (Arachnothera). These birds together with the Bulbul, and 

 the so called Magpie robin, attack these crickets whenever they 

 find them. The crickets, however, hide during the day in the 

 ground, or in rolled up leaves on the trees. They are attracted by 

 light and I have seen them caught in mosquito netting moth-traps 

 with a light inside. On several occasions I have found them con- 

 cealed in the clothes in a cupboard, they having flow.i into the light 

 during the night, and surprised by day fled to hide in the darkest 

 place they could find. 



A light kept burning at night over a pan of molasses or some 

 such sticky substance or of water to which kerosine has been added 

 will catch a large number of crickets but chiefly the smaller and 

 less destructive kinds. The big rarer ones should be traced to 

 their burrows whenever damage caused by them has been noticed. 

 — Editor. 



REPORT UPON A VISIT TO GREAT BRITAIN TO 

 INVESTIGATE THE INDIA-RUBBER INDUSTRY 

 IN ITS RELATION TO THE GROWTH 

 AND PREPARATION OF RAW 

 INDIA=RUBBER IN THE 

 MALAY PENINSULA. 



1. Early in 1905, at the request of the United Planters' 

 Association of the Federated Malay States, supported by the 

 Federated Malay States Government, the Government of the 

 Straits Settlements seconded me on special duty for six months, 

 and I travelled to Europe to investigate the condition there of the 

 india-rubber industry with the object of enabling the india-rubber 

 planters and the producers of the raw material in the East to 

 supply their rubber in the form most suited to the needs of the 

 manufacturers, and by bringing the East and West into touch to 

 stimulate the growth of the rubber-planting industry. I left 

 Singapore on March 2nd, and arrived in London on March 26th. 



2. My first action on reaching London was to set about ob- 

 taining official introductions to various india-rubber manufacturers 

 through the Colonial Office, the War Office and the Admiralty, 

 and to amplify those private introductions with which I had been 

 supplied in the East. 



