72 



[Jan. 1908. 



estrados alternately, and his highest delivery of rubber for any one month was 164 

 lb. dry. Being a quick worker, he, many times, when making an incision with his 

 maehadine, would strike hard and inflict a wound in the wood of the tree, thereby 

 damaging its productive capacity for the future. 



During the march over this estrado I saw a rubber tree which had been 

 broken off from the trunk forty feet from the ground, and only the trunk was left 

 standing. This trunk was 2k feet in diameter, and the picker was working the 

 same with three tichelas, and had been doing so for two months. One tree sixty 

 inches in circumference was hollow, and the same picker was working three tichelas 

 on this tree. 



The resting season for the rubber trees in this part of Bolivia is from August 

 to December, and as the ratio of rubber to latex is very high, this is probably the 

 cau^e of it. There are hundreds of new estrados in this section of Bolivia which 

 cannot be worked on account of the lack of labour and transportation facilities. The 

 latter are being rapidly overcome by the building of roads and railways in Bolivia 

 on the one hand, and the construction of the railway round the Madera Falls in 

 Brazil on the other, which will give a safe outlet down the Amazon for rubber in 

 the future, as well as by the mule trails at present constructed, but which will be 

 replaced by the Railways ; thus the output of rubber from the Hevea trees for this 

 Republic would be increased, and a corresponding increase in the export of same to 

 ten times the present quantity. 



F. J. DUNLEAVY. 



Sorata, Bolivia, October, 3rd, 1907, 



Full size. 



