45 
to  cultivate  rubber  in  Africa  and  Madagascar,  he  was  by  no  means 
prepared  to  see  the  rubber  plantation  in  the  Botanic  Gardens, 
which  astonished  him.  He  stated  that  the  damp  lowdying  ground, 
and  the  soil  in  which  the  trees  were  growing  was  exactly  similar 
to  that  of  the  best  Amazons  districts,  and  that  the  trees  in  every 
way  resembled  those  found  there,  both  in  kind,  appearance  and 
development  for  age.  'I'he  herring-bone  method  of  tapping  which 
we  had  been  adopting  and  which  has  been  often  described,  he  did 
not  approve  of,  and  declared  that  trees  so  cut  would  in  the  Amazons 
be  speedily  destroyed  by  insects  attacking  the  exposed  wood.  At 
his  suggestion  and  with  his  aid  we  ta[>ped  150  trees  in  the  Ama- 
zons method.  This  has  often  been  described  and  figured  and  is 
briefly  this.  The  collector  cuts  a single  cut  on  each  tree  as  high 
as  he  can  reach  with  a small  axe,  the  edge  of  which  is  an  inch  or 
an  inch  and-a  half  long.  Next  day  he  cuts  again  4 fingers'  breadth 
below  and  so  on  to  the  base  of  the  tree,  making  one  cut  a day  for 
everv  four  inches  of  diameter  of  the  tree,  so  that  a tree  12  inches 
through  would  have  three  cuts  a day.  Small  tins  tapering  to  the 
bottom  are  pushed  into  the  bark  by  their  sharp  edges  below  the 
sloping  cut  so  that  the  latex  is  caught  in  them,  d'he  first  day  the 
latex  is  watery  and  scanty,  and  is  generally  neglected,  but  it 
increases  in  quantity  each  day,  though  it  often  does  not  flow  really 
well  for  6 or  8 days.  The  preliminary  cuts  are  made  with  a view 
of  “calling  the  latex”.  It  has  often  been  shewn  that  in  the  her- 
ring-bone  method,  the  flow  of  latex  gradually  increases  as  the 
wounds  are  again  and  again  re-opened,  the  greatest  flow  usually 
occurring  on  the  eighth  day,  and  this  phenomenon  is  doubtless 
due  to  the  same  cause  as  produces  the  increased  flow  in  the  latex 
cuts  made  in  the  Amazons  method. 
At  M.  Bonnechaux’s  suggestion  an  iron  axe  (not  steel)  of  the 
exact  pattern  used  by  the  Seringueiros  of  the  Amazons,  was  made 
by  a Chinaman  in  a few  hours  at  a cost  of  twenty-five  cents,  and 
failing  anything  else,  small  conical  tins  used  for  cake-moulds  were 
used  to  catch  the  latex.  These  were  not  altogether  satisfactory, 
as  they  were  too  large  and  too  broad  at  the  bottom,  allowing  the 
latex  to  coagulate  too  quickly.  They  were  also  not  strong  enough 
to  be  ea^'lly  fixed  by  pushing  the  edge  into  the  bark  below  the  cut. 
However,  they  did  pretty  well  till  more  suitable  ones  could  be 
ma  le  The  tapping  takes  place  in  the  early  morning  as  soon  as 
daviight  appears,  and  the  milk  is  collected  when  a sufficient  num- 
ber ol  trees  have  be’  n done,  150  to  250  in  a morning,  the  collector 
stopping  abouL  10  or  ii  o’clock  and  going  round  again  pours  the 
milk  into  a specially  made  can,  and  takes  it  to  the  fire  to  be 
smoked.  The  trees  are  tapped  thus  for  180  days  continuously  and 
then  allowed  to  rest  for  six  months,  and  seem  so  little  the  worse 
that  M.  BonneCHAUX  declares  he  knows  of  trees  which  have  been 
tapped  thus  for  eighty  years.  - 
The  wounds  seem  to  close  up  with  surprising  rapidity,  espe- 
cially if  the  latex  remaining  in  them  is  not  removed,  so  that  the 
risk  of  injury  to  the  tree  from  fungi  or  insect  attacks  is  very  slight. 
It  might  be  thought  that  the  amount  procured  from  each  tree 
