37 2 



as have been made on the subject, in daily journals whose corres- 

 pondents do not fully understand what has been said. 



There are two main points in the paper, one that chemistry may, 

 ere long, be able to utilize the small quantities of Caoutchouc 

 known to occur in other plants beside the well-known four or five 

 important rubber plants ; and second that it may be possible to make 

 rubber synthetically. 



For the first point to be one of real practical importance it would 

 be necessary to find a plant which produces latex containing rubber 

 which can be more easily grown and produces so much latex that 

 even the small quantity of Caoutchouc it contains will be sufficient 

 for it to compete with say Hevea braziliensis. Thus say a latex con- 

 tains \ the amount of Caoutchouc produced by Hevea, the plant 

 would have to produce more than 8 times the amount of latex to 

 compete, as the extraction of the rubber from this thin latex would 

 obviously cost more than from the richer latex. It is hardly probable 

 that this would be discovered now. Still other latices might be ut- 

 ilized in a small way, such as those of the Jack tree, which might 

 possibly pay extraction in some parts of the world. But a discovery 

 of this nature, i e., of a method of utilizing the sticky immature rubber, 

 or viscin as it is commonly called, would be of some importance to 

 the Para-rubber planter, for by it he would be able to utilize the 

 thin sticky rubber from leaves and twigs of his Para-trees and the 

 tappings from the nursery beds, so that on the whole any such dis- 

 covery, almost certain to be made would rather benefit him than 

 injure his business. 



Synthetic rubber has been the bogy of many would-be investors 

 of rubber, and no question is more often asked than is it likely that 

 synthetic rubber will soon be invented, and the plantations ruined. 

 As Professor DUNST AN writes: " Rubber having all the qualities of 

 good Caoutchouc has been made from isoprene, which has been pre- 

 pared from oil of turpentine. ,, It surely needs hardly any pointing 

 out that the slow growing expensive turpentine trees, inhabitants of 

 cold climates where labour is extremely costly could not for a 

 minute compete against the rapid growing Para-rubber tree in 

 a climate where labour is cheap, especially when from the 

 Hevea we get the rubber fully prepared when the latex is drawn 

 from the tree, whereas in the turpentine tree after drawing off 

 the turpentine it has to be made into isoprene and then into 

 rubber. Isoprene must be made far more cheaply than in this way 

 to compete with Para-rubber. It is certain that we shall be able 

 to lower the cost of the production of rubber very considerably 

 in the next few years, perhaps to little more than half its present 

 cost. Can any substance be found from which isoprene or any 

 other hydrocarbon convertible into rubber can be obtained and 

 converted at a cheaper rate?. This is hardly probable. 



The vulcanization of latex at which Mr. Bamber has been work- 

 ing, was a subject of discussion many years ago in the Straits Its 

 commercial practicability depends on the possibility of starting 



