a height of 30 feet branches three or four inches in circum- 

 ference. 



Efficient spraying- machines should be found always in 

 working order in every estate store, just as the fire appar- 

 atus in a gallery of valuable pictures. The cost of even 

 the most expensive steam power spraying apparatus cap- 

 able of reaching trees of eighty feet or more in height, 

 bears an infinitesimal proportion to the value of the trees 

 on even a small rubber estate. 



The materials for spraying should also be kept in stock 

 so that no delay is experienced when such work has to be 

 done. My experience of over ten years' eastern planting 

 has been that the delay caused in getting weapons to fight 

 the disease has often caused the task of getting rid of the 

 pest to be much more difficult and expensive than it would 

 have been had the estates been forearmed. 



Fifty years ago the conditions favourable to the rapid 

 spread of disease caused by insect, fungi, or bacteria were 

 not so great as at the present day, and the presence of 

 35,000,000 trees in an area of some 26,000 square miles is 

 in itself a danger, but the weapons which the planters of 

 that day possessed for an intelligent fight against these 

 organisms were of little use and yielded without confidence. 

 In India the loss by wheat rust was some time ago estimated 

 at £91,000,000, and in Ceylon the leaf disease of coffee 

 caused the extinction of that industry, a loss of at least 

 £15,000,000. The work done by sanitation and preventive 

 medicine in preserving human life are now historical facts ; 

 200 years ago the mortality of London was 80 per 1,000, it 

 is now about 20. Until a few years ago contagious pleuro- 

 pneumonia and foot-and-mouth disease caused immense 

 losses of cattle, estimated at 2,000,000 per annum, worth 

 probably £30,000,000; they have now been almost ex- 

 terminated. Plant sanitation and preventive measures, 

 can, if invoked, do so much for the preservation of 

 cultivated plants, and with the knowledge we now possess 

 it is impossible that any disease could so seriously damage 

 a big agricultural industry as has been the case in the past. 



I )JST A N CES B ETWEEN TREES. 



The average number of trees per acre on rubber 

 estates in Malaya in 1908 was 168, or 16 feet by 16 feet 

 apart; the statistics for 1907 showed that on the 31st of 

 that year the average was 153, or 17 feet by 17 feet apart. 



This, for main' reasons, is an improvement. It is to 

 be regretted that the cultivation of rubber is too young an 



