tind Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— A v gust, 19i&. IW 



The braid manufacturers of Europe are always 

 wa ting for something new in the line of ma- 

 terial for braids, and when they get such a 

 material their profits are often very much 

 larger ; five hundred per cent profits are quite 

 usual and they often run to one thousand per 

 cent when a particularly fetching braid has been 

 hit upon. 



. There are numerous materials in the Philip- 

 pine Islands which could be made into braids, 

 and if these were to appear in the world's 

 market, and were established as a mode would 

 command a very high price. 



Local exporters are receiving requests con- 

 tinually for such materials, The greatest profit 

 to the Philippine Islands will result by having 

 the people make braids locally in their homes 

 than by sending the raw materials to Europe 

 and having the one thousand per cent profit 

 made there. 



Among these materials are skins of Pandans, 

 of the palms, and of buntal fibre from which 

 so many costly hats are now made, and a 

 considerable number of bast fibre. 



Ceylon produces some of these materials i 

 which might be used for braid manufacture, 

 which has become an important industry in 

 tropical countries. 



NOTES FROM THE PHILIPPINES: 

 RICE PALM PITH, FIBRE, SILK. &C. 



Manila, July 23rd. 



Dear Sir, — A few facts to be gathered from 

 today's Bulletin may be interesting : — 



(i) Natives are eating the pith of the Buri 

 palm in the Oriental Negros Province as the rice 

 crop is short, owing to the late long drought. 

 1 think this is the same as the palmyra palm. 

 The leaves are used to make hats of a very fine 

 quality. The pith is probably like sago. It 

 would be interesting to know if the pith has 

 ever been eaten in Ceylon. It is a pity to de- 

 stroy these valuable palms, and these people 

 will not plant others. 



The Government have purchased a large stock 

 of rice, to send to Provinces where rice crops 

 are short, and will sell it cheap where dealers 

 have raised the price too hi?h. The same thing 

 was done last year, and will have to be done 

 every year, as these lazy, shiftless natives are 

 too lazy to cultivate enough rice for their own 

 living, and have to import an immense quan- 

 tity from Saigon. 



(b) In Cebu Province locusts have done seri- 

 ous damage to crops. In one part 80 sacks of 

 locusts were caught. They are generally caught 

 in butterfly nets, and are roasted and eaten. 



(c) The"Sinamay" cloth made from Hemp 

 fibre is strong, coarse and transparent, and is 

 used as a lining on the lower part of dress 

 skirts to stiffen them. 



This fibre is exported largely, and is woven into 

 braids in Switzerland, France, and Italy, and 

 the braidB are woven into the finest ladies' hats. 

 The Bureau of Education will probably get the 

 fibre woven into braids and hats, which can be 

 gold ojucb cheaper thau those made in Europe, 



We have plenty of rain now, and will probably 

 have floods. 



There is a good deal of dengue fever in Manila 

 at present ; caused by mosquito bites. The Gov- 

 ernment Entomologist has 30 men at work, 

 pouring kerosene oil on stagnant pools. 



I introduced the Ceylon hybrid silkworm 

 here, and suggested to the Government Entomo- 

 logist to import Japanese silk-worms and cross 

 them with the Ceylon kind, and the result is 

 a great success, as they have 50 per cent, more 

 silk than the Ceylon worms. I think the Ceylon 

 kind has eigbt generations in a year, and the 

 Manila kind 18. The silk farm at Peradeniya 

 should import Manila and Japanese silk-worms. 

 — ICours very truly, 



S. 



THE NEW SYNTHETIC RUBBER. 



"Truth " on the New Product. 

 For the list thirty years it has, of course, 

 been known that an artificial rubber can be 

 made from isoprene, and those who have fol- 

 lowed the various ecientific discoveries also 

 know that all the artificial rubbers so far 

 produced have lacked those physical character- 

 istics which give natural rubber its commercial 

 value. Rubber, as produced by nature, my 

 scientific friends tell me, depends for its pecu- 

 liar properties more upon the complexity of its 

 molecular arrangement than upon mere chemi- 

 cal composition. Physical identity of structure 

 is of even more importance than chemical simi- 

 larity, and it is this which renaers the syn- 

 thetic production of rubber a problem of such 

 extraordinary difficulty. The tyre manufacturer 

 cares little whether the synthetic sub tance an- 

 swers chemical tests in the same way as natural 

 rubber. The first questions tne manufacturer 

 asks are with regard to the physical charac- 

 teristics of the new compou d. Are ics resi- 

 lience and tensile strei gtn equal to that of real 

 rubber ? Has it the same curability ? When 

 turned out from the laboratory these synthetic 

 compounds look like rubber and feel like rub- 

 ber. Moreover, they may vulcanise like rubber, 

 but they are obviously of no commercial use if 

 on being exposed to sunlight they gradually 

 collapse iuto one of those sticky masses which 

 were shown under the name of synthetic rubber 

 at the last International Rubber Exhibition. 



What, then, have Professor Perkin and Br. 

 Matthews to say with regard to the physical 

 characteristics of their product t Scarcely a 

 word. Experiments have been wholly confined 



to the chemical side of the problem 



Even in the event of synthetic rubber getting 

 beyond the laboratory stage it is highly im- 

 probable that it will compete successfully with 

 plantation rubber either in physical properties 

 or in cost of production, and it is doubtful 

 whether so much publicity would have been 

 given to the recent discovory were it not for the 

 tact that a certain group are desirous of raising 

 £450,000 on 6 par cent participating preference 

 shares for a company to be known as the Syn- 

 thetic Products Manufacturing Co., Limited. 

 The advance prospectus is mild enough, syn» 

 thetic rubber being the leant promineutiy dis« 



