413 



growing room — i.e., spade for the branches and Leaves of 

 some of his trees — it is preferable to pollard some of the 

 trees, and allow them to grow slowly underneath the 

 branches of the unpruned trees, rather than to Jeave the 

 decaying* roots of dead rubber trees, which he has cut down, 

 dotted all over his fields. 



Cover Plants Instead of Clean Weeding. 



The question as to the relative advantages of clean 

 weeding and the use of cover plants (the use of which has 

 been advocated in my annual reports for the last three 

 years) is gradually being seriously considered by the prac- 

 tical planter, and many thousands of acres of rubber, 

 certainly not less than 15,000, are now cultivated with 

 various cover plants. 



It needs but little observation of rubber clearings to 

 decide that an immense amount of top soil, containing a 

 large proportion of humus, has been washed away from 

 sloping land to the detriment, both present and future, of 

 the rubber. An examination of the water in the drains of 

 Hat land, which is dark-coloured when the clearing is first 

 opened and gradually becomes clearer when many tons of 

 water have passed through the soil, will show that this same 

 process of exhaustion of the soil is going on very rapidly 

 on clean weeded flat lands though not to the same extent 

 as on the hillsides. 



Most practical planters have observed that the roots of 

 plants, in the tropics grow more quickly and vigorously 

 when the earth where they are growing is shaded from the 

 sun, and for this reason the surface of nurseries is covered 

 with a thatch of grass or other convenient covering. 



.These arguments seem in themselves sufficient to in- 

 duce a trial of cover plants; but the additional argument 

 that the process of clean weeding is continuous and the most 

 costly of all the work on a rubber estate before it comes into 

 bearing should be a further reason for the adoption of the 

 system of cover plants. 



Various cover plants have been used on acreages vary- 

 ing from 4-00 acres, and practically in all cases with suc- 

 cessful results. 



It is unfortunate for the increase in the belief in this 

 method of rubber cultivation that a large number of the 

 planters who tried cover plants did so on the weediest and 

 worst-drained parts of their estates. It would be as fair 

 to test a food, which is recommended for supporting work- 

 ing men, on emaciated and abnormally weak persons, and 



