Gums, Resins. 



202 



[September, 1911. 



hundred will measure as much as 30 

 inches. The average run of the 1905-1906 

 plantings is 12 to 18 inches. 



" Eight men who have become fairly- 

 adept at handling the tapping knife are 

 now tapping under the direct super- 

 vision of the seveial managers. These 

 will form the nucleus of a much larger 

 force that will be required next year ; 

 when at least 20.000 trees will have 

 attained tappable size. 



"From the results obtained by these 

 men, explained in detail by another 

 paper to be read here to-day, the rubber 

 industry, young as it is, offers great 

 promise of a reasonable return on 

 capital invested, if conducted as it now 

 is by men of intelligence, ingenuity and 

 adaptability. 



"As the time for tapping over a 

 large area is at hand, one plantation has 

 already ordered machinery for a factory 

 which will be running within a few 

 months. 



" A movement is now on foot to unite 

 the companies now operating at Nahiku, 

 and if successful this factory will be 

 enlarged to handle the product of the 

 whole district. Additional advantages 

 to be gained by this move are the 

 establishment of a standard product to 

 be known as Hawaiian Rubber and doing 

 away with competition for labour among 

 the various companies. 



" Noticeable in the district is the 

 planting that has been done by home- 

 steaders. With a factory at hand to 

 handle the product as it comes from the 

 trees, the writer sees for the individual 

 planter a profitable use for his land." 



DlSCDSSION. 



Just two years ago when I went over 

 there, the Plantation was considering 

 putting the lands under cultivation. 

 About two acres had been cleaned up, 

 and some 30 or 40 bevea trees had been 

 planted there. Then there were very 

 few trees that would run 8 inches. To-day 

 under clean cultivation, with many of 

 the smallest trees thinned out; the 

 average size of the trees that I men- 

 tioned is now about 12 to 18 inches, with 

 many 20 inches, and some even as high 

 as thirty. The growth of older trees 

 under clean cultivation is not as rapid 

 as that of the later plantings, and it is 

 evident from this that if you plant a 

 tree in ploughed land it will grow faster 

 than a tree that has been growing for 

 several years in unploughed land, and is 

 clean cultivated later on. Trees of later 

 planting in most cases kve caught up 

 with the other trees. You can find 

 there acres and acres of trees that will 

 average twelve to eighteen inches. 



Mr. Lindsay : How about the Hevea 



trees? 



Mr. Williamson : The Hevea in some 

 lots seems to be doing nicely. I think it 

 was in June, 1907, that the first lot was 

 set out up there, and those 1 have 

 measurements of. They average about 

 10 inches at the base, and the bark will 

 average a fourth of an inch in thickness 

 22 inches from the ground. The hevea 

 trees throughout the Plantation seem to 

 be growing very slowly as compared 

 with the ceara. 



/ Mr, Thayer : Will it be a long time 

 before any of those hevea trees produce ? 



Mr. Williamson : I am inclined to think 

 it will be a year or two. If you wait 

 until they are 20 inches in circumference, 

 it will be a couple of years at least. 



Dr. Clark: Are they injured by the 

 heavy winds— do the leaves fall off? 



Mr. Williamson : The hevea leaves do 

 not stand the wind. The leaves seem to 

 curl up in the wind and get brown on 

 the edges and blow off. The trees in 

 our nursery average about 10 inches. A 

 few ceara trees on our Plantation that 

 were given garden cultivation from the 

 first measure a little over 40 inches, and 

 the average is 30 inches. That is a very 

 good growth. They have grown so fast 

 that the wind has not damaged them a 

 particle. 



Address by Dr. E. V. Wilcox. 



The Chairman then introduced Dr. 

 E. V. Wilcox, Director of the United 

 States Agricultural Experiment Station 

 at Honolulu, who spoke as follows :— 



One of the things that strikes one in 

 looking into the history of the rubber 

 industry in Hawaii, is the fact that the 

 men who have borne the burden of 

 the finances of the rubber here have 

 had a very good, steady nerve all 

 the time. When we stop to think that 

 at the start nothing was known as 

 to whether rubber would succeed here 

 or not, that the expense of managing the 

 rubber was not understood, that it was 

 not known what the yield would be, and, 

 furthermore, the whole proposition of 

 managing ceara rubber as a plantation 

 business rather than wild trees, was 

 almost entirely new, and we had next to 

 no information on it at all v I say it 

 required good business enterprise to 

 start in and plant as has been done in 

 Hawaii and keep the business going. 



When we first began work on the 

 rubber here, the first tapping and experi- 

 ments were carried on by Mr. Smith, and 

 they indicated that satisfactory yields 

 could be obtained, that the trees were 

 actually producing quantities which 



