536 



It is not to the interests of cultivated rubber that the output of 

 the Brazilian product should decrease very rapidly. There is not yet 

 sufficient cultivated rubber or wild rubber from other source to supply 

 the increasing demand. 



Those who look forward to a future with immense areas of culti- 

 vated rubber in suitable climates, of which the Malay Peninsula can 

 claim to be the best, believe that cultivated rubber will in time satisfy 

 all the manufacturers in regard to its physical qualities and will be 

 produced in sufficient quantity to meet the world's requirements. 



It is not easy to foresee the future demands for rubber, but a 

 substance which has made itself so indispensable to all civilised races 

 must be required in increasing quantities, and the fear of over-produc- 

 tion may be cancelled, by the quite as likely possibility of the supply 

 not meeting the demand and the consequent resort to other substances 

 as substitutes for rubber. 



The question of what are termed " rubber substitutes" has been 

 much discussed, and various scares of important discoveries have made 

 the flesh of those interested in rubber creep. That various substances 

 can be used instead of rubber for various purposes is acknowledged, 

 just as cotton can be used for silk, or paper for cotton, but that is a 

 different question to the production of a substitute for rubber which 

 will possess the physical properties of rubber to which all its com- 

 mercial value is due. In this direction the year 1907 had nothing to 

 show, and December, 1907, was no nearer than December, 1906, to 

 the practical solution of the problem which would produce a great rival 

 to plantation rubber. Chemists and those best able to judge of the 

 possibilities of the discovery of a substance having all the physical 

 properties of India rubber made from crude materials of so cheap a 

 nature as to be able to undersell the natural article, cannot foresee 

 success, and all so-called perfect substitutes for rubber brought before 

 the public have failed to survive investigation. 



Improvement in Planting Methods. 



One satisfactory effect of the drop in prices has been a serious 

 tendency to consider whether the present methods of opening and 

 keeping up an estate could not be modified so as to save expense. 



In every industry profits \ery large in relation to the cost of pro- 

 duction have a tendency to produce a perhaps too liberal treatment of 

 expenditure, and in rubber this is the case, compared with the 

 practice in the tea and coffee industries in Ceylon and Southern India. 



Rapid planting of healthy vigorous trees was the object aimed 

 at, even if this was achieved at a larger cost per acre than slow and 

 less expensive methods might have incurred. 



Is Clean Weeding Advisable ? 



The remarks in my last report as to the value of a green manure 

 plant, of which I gave examples, in the place of the general habit of 

 regularly scraping off weeds and allowing the sun and rain free access 

 to the soil had little or no effect at that time, but the desire to cut 

 down expenses has caused the suggestion to be reconsidered. 



