4 



Until order is established in the interior commercial enterprise 

 will always be difficult. 



The population of Liberia consists of 3,000 American Liberians, 

 5,000 English natives, 100,000 Kroos and about 2,000,000 Aboriginals, 

 who are constantly fighting with each other (from the L'Agronomie 

 Tropicale, October, 1909.) 



The Liberian Company is also planting Para rubber on a large 

 scale, the seeds being supplied from the Botanic Gardens, Singapore. 



PARA RUBBER IN FRENCH INDO CHINA. 



We take the following notes on the cultivation of Para rubber in 

 the experimental station of Ong Yem from the Bulletin, de la Chambre 

 d'Agriculture, October, 1909, p. 455. The trees were planted in 1898, 

 and thus are nearly eleven years old. The average diameter of ten 

 trees is given as .843 mm. in 1908 and .895 mm. in 1909. 



The biggest tree measured 1.26 metre in 1908 ("3 ft. 3.71 in. about) 

 and 1.35 next year. This may be considered a good growth. These 

 trees were tapped every day for a year and gave 14 kilos 497, or 

 I kilo 449 each, (2 lbs. 3 oz. 4 drs. about), the rubber was not quite 

 dry when weighed and allowing for a further loss of 20 per cent, 

 this gives I kilo, 160, per tree of ten years old a year. 



One must not generalise too much on this, as only a small 

 number of trees were tapped. Vernet's method of tapping every two 

 days in a special or half spiral gave distinctly inferior results, but 

 comparison is difficult because of the different sizes of the trees 

 experimented with. 



The plots at Ong Yem are sandy and poor in fertilizing elements, 

 and the growth in such a soil is very satisfactory. The trees produced 

 very vigorous shoots in the dry season in a soil where water is met 

 with only at a depth of 10 to 12 metres at the end of April. 



The plantations in Cochin-China are increasing, the larger ones 

 are established on the red sands. The other planters, with smaller 

 areas, prefer the sandy lands near Saigon. 



A NEW RUBBER JOURNAL. 



A new and local rubber journal appears in the form of Grenier's 

 Rubber News, published at Kuala Lumpur, fortnightly, at three 

 dollars a year. It is a small work of 9 pages, chiefly consisting of 

 extracts from home papers, and a London letter. The papers from 

 which these extracts appear are not the usual agricultural journals, 

 but such papers as The Financier, The Pali-Mall Gazette, The Finan- 

 cial News, etc. ; the kind of notes which are apt to be overlooked by 

 agriculturists. Many are quite interesting and useful, and give an idea 

 of how the great industry strikes the commercial man at home. 



