474 



RUBBER TREES AT BUKIT RAJAH 



Plate VI. 



We give here a photograph of Para rubber trees grown among 

 Fjcus Elastica at Bukit Rajah Estate in Selangor. The trees were 

 planted in July to September in 1899, and the photograph was 

 taken in November, 1901. The rapid growth and distinct habit 

 of the two trees are well shown. 



THE HEVEA "PARA", INDIAN RUBBER: 



Origin of the Introduction and Cultivation of the Tree, 

 By H. A. Wick mam. 



Although advertisements for sale of the seed of Para rubber 

 (Hevea) at so much a thousand have now been commonly seen for 

 some time past in all the planting Journals in Ceylon and the East, 

 it is not generally known that to the initiation of the Government 

 of India is due the fact that they are within the reach of the 

 planting community at all. Any planter who has had practical 

 experience with the seed of this tree wilj understand the difficulty 

 which had to be encountered in getting the original stock plants 

 established in the Eastern tropics at such distance from their pri- 

 mitive home in the high land forests of the valley of the Amazon. 



In the first instance, as far back as the seventies, the initiation 

 of the Government of India in backing liberally the recommenda- 

 tion of Sir Joseph Hooker enabled me to seize an opportunity, 

 singularly occurring for specially chartering a steamship which 

 happened to be up the Amazon River at the exact time of the fall 

 of the ripe seed in the rubber forest. Had this not been so, I 

 should never have been able to accomplish the feat of securing the 

 large original stock from an only seed so prone to quickly lose 

 vitality. 



Just now there seems to be a disposition in some quarters to 

 deprecate the tffoits made by the Indian Government as bearing 

 on the method best for the cultivation of the Hevea. This seems 

 to be exceedingly short-sighted and ill-advised. As a matter of 

 fact, in the hands of the Government of India through their forestry 

 officers, ail such experimental planting or cultivation cannot be 

 calculated to be other than object lessons of the greatest value to 

 practical planters in all the equatorial colonies, in that it will 

 furnish them with authoritative data (especially the Hevea) of a 

 nature to be depended upon. 



The true "Para/' Indian rubber (Hevea) is to be found growing 

 naturally within the immense forest-covered area of the valley of 

 the Amazon and in the tribularv rivers, including the head streams 

 of the Orinoco. I found it abundant high up on the Orinoco, above 

 the junction of the Guaviare (the latter stream by right, indeed, 

 should be styled the head stream of the Orinoco). It is plentiful 

 on the banks of the Cassiquiarc — that curious bifurcation by which 



