and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— May, 1910. 465 



HI. LEPLAE'S VISIT TO THE EAST. 



TOUR OF THE BELGIAN CONGO 

 DIRECTOR OF AGRICULTURE. 



Visit to Java : An Interesting Conversation. 



It was the good fortune of one of our re- 

 presentatives the other day to run up against 

 M. Leplae, the Belgian Director-General of 

 Agriculture for the Congo, who was on his way 

 back to Brussels to the Congress of Colonial 

 Agriculture, after a tour in the Middle and 

 Far East where he had been to learn under 

 what conditions rubber is grown, what kind of 

 soil is most suitable for it, how it should be 

 planted, how it should be tapped, what are the 

 best instruments for tapping, and what are the 

 best methods of manufacturing the article. He 

 had also, of course, taken the opportunity of 

 making a study of other tropical products : but 

 it was in rubber that he had been most interested 

 in view of the fact that, after his return to Bel- 

 gium, he wfll go on to the Congo and there have 

 planted under his supervision 5,000 acres of 

 Hevea, which, he has not the slightest doubt, 

 is the most suitable kind. 



The Products of Java. 

 When M. Leplae left Ceylon on March 5th he 

 went to Batavia and then to Buitenzorg. Here 

 he was received by the Governor- General of the 

 Dutch East Indies, Mr A W F Idenburg, who 

 has been twice Minister of the Colonies in Hol- 

 land, and the Director of Agriculture, Mr 

 Lovink, who has been Director-General of Agri- 

 culture in Holland. He is now undertaking a 

 complete re-organisation of the Department of 

 Agriculture in Java, in which will, in all pro- 

 bability, be merged the Board of Trade, for, 

 as nearly all the trade in Java is in agri- 

 cultural products, they deem it expedient to 

 make the Board of Agriculture and the Board 

 of Trade one Department. 



M. Leplae visited the botanical garden, labo- 

 ratories, and museums at Buitenzorg, which 

 with the possible exception of Pusa, near Cal- 

 cutta, form the largest scientific institution 

 in connection with Tropical Agriculture and 

 Botany in the East. These he found very in- 

 teresting. He also travelled extensively in Java, 

 studying the estates growing sugar cane, Manila 

 hemp, sisal, tea, cinchona, cacao, pepper, kola, 

 coca, indiarubber (hevea and ficus), rice and 

 other products. 



Malabar Tea : 1,800 lb. Per Acre. 

 He made a special visit to the big tea factory 

 of Malabar, near Bandoeng, which was the 

 finest in Java. It was, he said, deemed to be 

 perfect as regarded cultivation. They got very 

 large returns per acre— the largest, it was be 

 lieved, in the world, with the exception, per- 

 haps, of some in Assam. The crop amounted to 

 something like 1,800 lb. per acre. The tea was 

 grown on volcanic soil of a very high fertility, 

 and there was a very large amount of rain. It 

 was perfectly cultivated and all the factory 

 machinery was driven by electricity. It gave 

 regularly dividends of 80 to 100 per cent. 



59 



Rubber. 



With regard to rubber, Ficus Elastica was 

 in great favour ; mistakenly, he thought. Hevea 

 seemed to him to be much better, especially 

 after what he had seen in the Federated Malay 

 States, There could not be better rubber than 

 Hevea. There were few old plantations in Java 

 but there were very many acres under young rub- 

 ber which was growing very well. This was ac- 

 counted for by the very rich soil. French, Eng- 

 lish, Dutch, and Belgian Companies were fre- 

 quently opening out new plantations. It was 

 generally believed that in Java and Sumatra there 

 were from 200,000 to 300,000 acres under rubber. 

 Sovereign Rights. 



Asked as to the position of affairs with regard 

 to sovereign rightsiM. Leplae said that sovereign 

 rights belonged, apart from Government, only 

 to those estates which were sold prior to the 

 Dutch occupation. All other land was leased. 

 The Government was trying to abolish the 

 existing sovereign rights. There was one 

 "Society" with English capital in it that had 

 bought an estate over which the owners 

 had sovereign rights but as far as the 

 majority of capitalists was concerned, the 

 acquisition of sovereign rights by the Govern- 

 ment would have no effect. There was only 

 one estate in five or six hundred, or a 

 thousand, that was not leased. 



In Sumatra M. Leplae visited only an estate 

 belonging to the Galang Co., on an island of 

 15,000 acres, in the Rio Archipelago, just out- 

 side Singapore. On that island 2,600 acres 

 had been put under rubber which was grow- 

 ing fairly well in clay soil. Very interesting 

 results from the use of nitrogen manure were 

 being obtained. The application seemed to 

 be doing a great deal of good, for trees 1^ 

 years old were as large as trees 3 years old on 

 the sam9 soil, but to which the manure had not 

 been applied. Something like half-a-pound of 

 guano per tree was used to start the growth in 

 the cold, clay soil. Once they got started they 

 grew perfectly, but if they did not start weil 

 they grew very slowly. 



M. Leplae visited numerous estates in the 

 neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpur, especially some 

 with seven, eight. 10 and 12 year old rubber, 

 and was very much interested in what he 

 saw. The factories were very well equipped 

 and many new ones were being erected, with 

 suction gas plant machinery of 100 or more 

 horse- power. Some of them made up to 3,000 

 lb. of dry rubber a day. They generally now 

 went in for rapid coagulation, coagulating 

 the latex in ten minutes, instead of taking 

 a whole night as formerly. They got a 

 better coloured rubber in this way, a paler 

 rubber. Some, however, smoked the rubber 

 with very successful results and one estate 

 he visited, which smoked the whole of its 

 No. 1 quality rubber nearly black, obtained last 

 week the record price of 12s 9ifd a lb. 



Clean Weeding. 



What had interested him very much was that 

 in all the plantations clean weeding was in 

 vogue. They were very enthusiastic advocates 

 of clean weeding and thoy did not use green 

 manure. They occasionally planted small plants 



