477 



enquiries) growing scattered along the wet margins in going up 

 the lower Amazon or tributaries, whereas the true forests of the 

 " Para" Indian rubber tree lie back on the highlands, and those 

 commonly seen by the enquiring traveller are but ill-grown trees 

 which have sprung up from seeds brought down by freshets from 

 the interior. 



As a matter of fact, the whole of the Hevea which I procured 

 for the Government of India were the produce of large-grown trees 

 in the forest covering the broad plateaux dividing the Tapajos from 

 the Madeira rivers. The soil of these well-drained, wide-extending- 

 forest covered tablelands is a stiff soil, not remarkably rich, but 

 deep and uniform in character. The Hevea found growing in these 

 unbroken forests rival all but the largest of the trees therein, attain- 

 ing to a circumference of io ft. to 12 ft. in the bole. These forest 

 plains, having all the character of widespread tablelands, occupy 

 the space betwixt the great arterial river systems of the Amazon, 

 and present an escarped face, which follows, at greater or less dis- 

 tance, and abuts steeply on the igapo or bagas i.e., the marginal 

 river plains subject to inundation by the annual rise of the great 

 river. So thorough is the drainage of this highland that the people 

 who annually penetrate into these forests for the season's working 

 of the rubber have to utilise certain lianas (water-bearing vines) for 

 their water supply, since none is to be obtained by surface-well- 

 sinking, in spite of the heavy rainfall during great part of the year. 



The Hevea is much more amenable, better adapted for systematic 

 cultivation, planting, and working than any other of the rubber- 

 yielding trees with which I am acquainted for instance, the Ficus 

 elastica of the Eastern tropics or the Ficus regia of New Guinea, 

 and probably of Malaya ; the various species of jungle rubber vines 

 of the East and of New Guinea and tropical Africa; and, to a less 

 degree, the Castilloa and Ceara of tropical America. The remark- 

 ably shapely cylindrical form of the lower trunk (the workable part 

 of the tree) from the ground upward renders it singularly adapted 

 to reqular extraction of the rubber latex, and although the latex of 

 the Hevea does not appear to lend itself to the process of separa- 

 tion by centrifugal separating machines, as do the Castilloas of 

 Guatemala and Southern Mexico, the " Para" rubber, produced by 

 a simple smoke process which has been devised always commands 

 the best market price. 



In New Guinea I was in 1894 first to discover a vine growing in 

 the forest there which produces a very fine quality of Indian rubber. 

 There is also a large forest tree, native of these forests, (a species 

 of ficus) which yields a good class of rubber in quantity. None of 

 these, however, being so suited (so amenable) to cultivation in 

 plantation as the " Para, " it is much to be recommended that cul- 

 tivation of the Hevea be encouraged in that late and undeveloped 

 possession of the British Empire. Now that it has been established 

 in the East, there should be no great difficulty in bringing it down 

 from Singapore; and I have myself seen large tracts of forest and 

 jungle land in New Guinea which are admirably adapted for the 

 planting of this, the premier rubber-producing tree. 



