.Tune 1907.] 



411 



Miscellaneous. 



for the lines in the case of any coolie becoming sick of any disease which is prevalent 

 or dangerous to his fellows, they are very valuable in cases of malingering also. 



There are, no doubt, many points which I have missed in this essay, but as I 

 am not yet sufficiently educated in planting to see things from a manager's point of 

 view, I shall deem it a great favour if any planters who observe the omission of im- 

 portant items from their point of view, will communicate with me direct to Kuala 

 Lumpor, I should be most happy to discuss any matter which concerns the 

 welfare of the coolie in Malaya.— Agricultural Bulletin of the Straits and F. M. S. 



Correspondence. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF CEYLON RUBBER. 



New York, April 12th, 1907. 



Dear Sir,— I delivered a lecture on Ceylon a few days ago at the New York 

 Athletic Club before an audience of about eight hundred people, and amongst 

 several gentlemen who came to speak to me afterwards was a Mr. Townsend, 

 Presideut of the Manhattan Rubber Company. This gentleman was very anxious 

 that I should go over his factory with him, which 1 readily agreed to do in case I 

 might be able to get some information which would be of use to rubber planters in 

 Ceylon. 



I thought at first of giving you a detailed account of the many interesting 

 things which I saw in this factory, showing the numerous uses to which rubber is 

 put, but it would take up too much space in your valuable paper, and I could not do 

 it justice useless I wrote in extenso. 



Two things, however, struck me which may either have no bearing at all on 

 the situation in Ceylon or be of great importance. 



I noticed that the rubber after being cleaned and prepared is kept in a room 

 from which the greater part of the light was carefully excluded, and on making 

 inquiry Mr. Townsend informed me that the light had a deleterious effect on the 

 rubber in that state, something like disintegration or some chemical change of that 

 sort setting in when exposed to the sunlight. Considering the excessive heat from 

 the sun in a tropical climate, it occurred to me that it might be worth while for 

 Ceylon planters to experiment by keeping the rubber after coagulation and before 

 shipment in a darkened room. (I am speaking without any knowledge at all of how 

 rubber is kept and prepared, as I never had the opportunity while in Ceylon to go 

 over a rubber estate in bearing.) 



Mr. Townsend also informed me that the excessive cleaning of Ceylon 

 rubber was, in his opinion, an unnecessary expense, as no matter how clean it 

 might be when it arrived at a factory, it nevertheless had to be cleaned again by 

 machinery, and he told me that such rubber cleaning machines are iound in every 

 rubber factory, and that the rubber from every part of the world went through the 

 process of cleaning before manufacture. 



The reason for the above remarks is that Mr. Townsend said that the faults 

 he found with Ceylon rubber were that it contained an excess of resin, and that its 

 textile hardness was not up to that of rubber from other countries. 



It occurred to me that the exposure of rubber to the strong sunlight of the 

 tropics and the double cleaning which it has to go through (I mean the cleaning in 

 Ceylon and here) might possibly account for the want of textile hardness of which he 



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