114 



herself go, easily, it she can help it — still have gone on bear- 

 ing frnit, which, dropping to the ground, has produced young 

 trees, that, where allowed to live, have taken the place, in time, as th© 

 parents, damaged to death by irresponsible collectors, died out. Another 

 economical system of collecting has been described, of merely punctur- 

 ing the bark all over, with pin pricks as it were, thus allowing the milk 

 to ooze, to be collected as tears, a day or two afterwards, when dried by 

 the atmosphere on the bark of the tree. This system could be carried 

 out on all parts of the tree that could be reached, and would inflict very 

 little damage, if any, of a permanent character on it, as the minute 

 punctures would heal quickly, when the process could be repeated again 

 indefinitely. This system is only new in the form of the method of 

 tapping, for the Aboriginal Indians of the Guianas, and probably the 

 West Indies and other regions, have practised it from time immemorial 

 by pierc' ig the bark, in a very rough way it must be said, nnd allowing 

 the miliv to dry in tears on the tree, which, collected when dry, they 

 wind like string into balls for those playing games in which balls are 

 are used. The practice has been often observed on the t'pong tree 

 (Sapium big Land ulo sum) in this Colony, and described manv years ago. 

 The latest proposal is to grow rubber plants, sown thickly, as wheat or 

 hay is sown and grown, and reap it as an annual crop, using up the 

 whole plant, bark, wood and leaves, and extracting the milk by a chem- 

 ical process. This method of felling the balata trees and stripping them 

 of bark, twigs and leaves, and using all then in a chemical process for 

 the extraction of the rubber, or some other analagous, was tried here in 

 this Colony many years ago. But it was abandoned, owing to the iin- 

 nurity and poor character of the balata so extracted and produced. It 

 was revived again some years ago ; and it has been frequently reported 

 that the Government of Venezuela has given out vast concessions of the 

 enormous forests of that country in which this system of extraction is 

 the method that is being pursued. Some gentlemen came here to 

 Georgetown, two or three years ago, with the object of getting great 

 ooncesssions of a like character of the balata forests of this Colony, they 

 undertaking with slips and young plants just sprouting in the under 

 brush, besides paying royalty and duty, to plant up the ground left bare 

 behind them as they progressed in the clearing of the forests. It was 

 found however that our forest laws did not admit of problematical ex- 

 periments on the scale and under the schema proposed. ("This scheme 

 is now about to be tested, great quantities of the native Heveas having 

 been lately raised). From the schemes de-cribed, it is evident that very- 

 great economies can be practiced in rubber forests and in rubber culti- 

 vation and collecting, the method of working in the past, as every one 

 knows who has given any attention to the matter at all, being simply 

 ruinous to future permanance : — 



RUBBER IN PENANG * 



As great interest is being taken in Para Rubber and considerable 

 capital invested in its cultivation, I have again tapped the best tree in 

 the garden from which lib. of rubber was taken during the rainy season 

 in June, 1897. A sample of this was subsequently submitted to Messrs. 



C. Curtis, in Report^ Penang Botanic Gardens. 



