Gums, Resins, 



292 



[October, 1909. 



THE HARVESTING OP RUBBER 

 IN HAWAII. 



An Outline op a Co-operative Experi- 

 ment. 



By Ralph S. Hosmer. 



(From the Hawaiian Forester and 

 Agriculturist, Vol. V., No. 12, 

 December, 1908). 



(Read at the Second Annual Meeting 

 of the Hawaiian Rubber Growers' 

 Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, 

 November 18, 1908). 



The object of this paper is briefly to 

 "escribe the co-operative investigation 

 r ecently undertaken by the Hawaii 

 Experiment Station, the four rubber 

 plantations at Nahiku, Maui, and the 

 Division of Forestry of the Territorial 

 Board of Agriculture and Forestry, to 

 determine the best method of harvesting 

 rubber in Hawaii. 



By way of preface it may be recalled 

 that in the summer of 1906 during an 

 examination of the planted forest at 

 Lihue, Kauai, made by Mr. C. S. Judd, 

 then an agent of the Division of For- 

 estry, there was brought to public atten- 

 tion the existence of two groves of Ceara 

 rubber trees at Lihue and at Koloa, 

 Kauai. As the trees were large enough 

 be to tapped, these groves presented an 

 opportunity for securing data as to 

 methods of tapping and other facts and 

 figures of value to the rubber industry. 

 Accordingly, arrangements were at once 

 made with both the Lihue and e the Koloa 

 Plantation Companies to permit syste- 

 matic tapping tests to be undertaken. 

 At first it was planned that the Divi- 

 sion of Forestry should carry on the 

 work, but as the Hawaii Experiment 

 Station had a man available, which the 

 Division of Forestry then did not, it was 

 decided by the Board that it was best 

 that the Experiment Station undertake 

 the investigation. The field work was 

 carried on by Mr. Q. Q. Bradford under 

 the direction and supervision of Mr. 

 Jared G. Smith, then Director of the 

 Station, and much valuable information 

 was collected. The results of the 

 investigation have been published re- 

 cenly as Bulletin No. 16 of the Hawaii 

 Experiment Station — an important con- 

 tribution to our knowledge of rubber in 

 Hawaii, 



Necessarily one investigator working 

 with only limited means cannot be 

 expected to answer all the questions 

 that arise in so large a field as is the duty 

 of a rubber production in Hawaii. At 

 the beginning of this last summer it 

 became apparent that further study on 



the ground was urgently required, parti- 

 cularly in the way of getting together 

 exact figures on the cost of tapping the 

 trees and attending to the other details 

 necessary in transforming the latex into 

 a marketable product. 



To meet this need I proposed to Dr. E. 

 V. Wilcox, the present Director of the 

 Hawaii Experiment Station, soon after 

 his arrival in Hawaii in July last, that 

 such an investigation be undertaken 

 jointly by his Station and by the Divi- 

 sion Forestry ; the Experiment Station 

 to furnish the man to do the work, the 

 Division of Forestry to supply the 

 necessary funds for salary and expenses. 

 This plan met with Dr. Wilcox's hearty 

 approval, and later, with that of the 

 representatives of the four rubber 

 plantations of Nahiku. 



From the start the experiment has 

 been planned with special reference to 

 securing figures that shall have direct 

 practical bearing on the commercial 

 development of the rubber industry. 

 To attain this result there was kept 

 constantly in mind in planning the tap- 

 ping tests the conditions that the rub- 

 ber plantation manager must face daily 

 in actual practice. To this end it was 

 arranged that there should first be tried 

 only the simplest possible methods of 

 tapping, such as any labourer of ordi- 

 nary intelligence could learn to do, and 

 that all refinements of process be at 

 the start done away with- It was fur- 

 ther provided that any given tapping 

 test should be made on a large enough 

 number of trees to be really represen- 

 tative, and that each such test should be 

 continued as long as the size of the trees 

 warranted. Another provision of the 

 same order was that an accurate record 

 be kept of the time of all labourers 

 employed, in units of not less than one- 

 half of an actual working day, the 

 experiments being so planned as to keep 

 the men busy during that time. 



The two important points on which 

 the success of the rubber industry in 

 Hawaii turns are first, whether the 

 trees yield latex in commercial quan- 

 tities, and second, whether the latex can 

 be collected and prepared for market at 

 a profit. Until these questions are defi- 

 nitely answered the rubber industry 

 must remain in the experimental stage. 

 From the tappings of larger trees that 

 have so far been made in Hawaii there 

 is every reason to be sanguine over the 

 flow of latex. The present investigation 

 should go a long way toward throwing 

 light on the cost of handling the product, 

 for the figures that are being collected 

 refer not alone to the tapping of the 

 trees but include as well the several 



