4H 



Rambong trees approaching 4 years of age, and the early treat- 

 ment of these trees has naturally been a subject of much concern 

 to the management. We take it that at three years of age our 

 trees in this particular locality are about 25 feet in height and have 

 a spread of about 30 feet in diameter, the foliage being almost 

 impenetrably dense and reaching right down to, and in some cases, 

 spreading out along, the ground. The soil is of course the richest 

 drained alluvial, and the trees are apparently much more at home 

 in it than on the hills, where the growth is very much slower, and 

 nothing like the same quantity of leaf is to be seen. I mention 

 this particularly because it seems to me that this dissimilarity in 

 growth renders it probable that treatment which suits our Ram- 

 bong on the flats may not be the right thing for hill cultivation, 

 and it will therefore be of great value if we ran collect information 

 from those who have experience of both. 



I have found that cutting off the lower branches, pruning (to 

 lighten the head) and removing the smaller aerial roots does un- 

 doubtedly give the tree a shock and checks its growth, as Mr 

 Irving says, and, for some time past, because we did not know 

 w hat to do and could not find out our trees have been left to 

 themselves, to grow as they chose. Mr. Thos. North Christie of 

 Ceylon, who was over here recently, was very interested in this 

 question, and we were able to show him several trees, which, upon 

 parting the leaves and branches and pushing our way in, we found 

 to be " casting " numbers of both branches and aerial roots. It 

 seemed as if these were absolutely smothered by the dense shade 

 and rotted off quite naturally by themselves leaving it a compara- 

 tively easy matter to move about, when once inside, round the 

 stem and main branches of the tree. Some of the branches which 

 were thus dying off were as thick as a man's wrist, and it was 

 perfectly obvious that the trees were thorough* healthy and that 

 this singular condition was merely an effort of nature and not a 

 result of disease. 



We are still watching developments and not touching our trees 

 with the knife at all, and my belief is that we shall have an infi- 

 nitely bigger tapping area to work upon, when we once get to work 

 in earnest, than if we had trimmed our stems up ; whether the 

 latex will be as rich in caoutchouc, when collected from the thick- 

 branches as well as the aerial roots and stem remains to be seen, 

 but I am sure the yield must be far heavier. 



It may be of interest to your readers to hear that a tree on Bukit 

 Rajah, under 4 years old, has just been tapped and yielded in two 

 days, half a pouud of dry scrap rubber — stem, branches and aerial 

 roots were scored all over with a sharp knife, the rubber being 

 peeled off from the cuts the next day ; on the third cutting the 

 flow of latex was so poor, that the tree was left alone for the time 

 being; no damage at all was done by the cuts and in a month 

 hence, I hope to see the treatment repeated. 



Yours faithfully, 



K. V. CAREY. 



