382 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



RUBBER IN JAVA. 



There is published in "Grenier's Rubber 

 News" of July 8, an interview with Mr. G. A. 

 Wilmot, manager of Kalimenger Estate, Djeroc- 

 keigi, Java, who was on a visit to the F. M. IS. 

 Mr. Wilmot thinks the somewhat backward 

 growth of a great deal of Java rubber is due to 

 the fact that of the 60,000 acres under rubber 

 in Java, a large majority of the estates are 

 iuterplanted with coffee. He, however, 

 thought that where the rubber was grown by 

 itself it showed as favourable a growth as 

 obtaining in other parts of the Middle East, 

 and he anticipated that the Bandjar district, 

 where a number of rubber estates are coming 

 on well, should ere long make a reputation for 

 itself. Mr. Wilmot referred to the practice in 

 Java of having honeycombed terraces and water- 

 holing on the slopes, and of deep draining, 

 owing to many of the estates being on the edge 

 of morasses, on the flat. He also stated that 

 on the slopes they dig a small trench about 6 ft. 

 in front of a line of rubber trees. The put into 

 this trench the seeds of the Kemalndinan 

 legume. As these grow up they prevent wash 

 from the terraces, while the nitrogen they con- 

 tain contributes to the nutriment of the trees. 



MOSQUITOES. 



"The Reduction of Domestic Mosquitoes: ' By 

 E. H. Ross, Murray, 5s, deals primarily with 

 the removal of the causes of tropical disease, 

 Mr. E. H. Ross, the pioneer exponent (in 

 Egypt) of his brother's great discovery, is one 

 of the authorities of note. Mr. Ross's book is, 

 as it were, an admirable enlargement of the 

 Mosquito Brigade Handbook published some 

 years ago by his brother. It is much bigger 

 than that little book, and no less practical ; 

 it is throughout beautiful with a vehement 

 enthusiasm which one has come to associate 

 with the name of Ross ; and, better still, it 

 brings the subject home by a most interest- 

 ing study of the life of a female mosquito. It 

 tells not only what the mosquito is and does, and 

 how it lives, but also how it may be checked, 

 how attacked, and what the cost will be, and 

 what the opposition, and the results in terms 

 of human prosperity. 



A book like this book of Mr. Ross's should 

 be issued broadcast to every official in all our 

 tropical dependencies ; for though the glory 

 of the discovery of the part played by the 

 mosquito in the spreading of disease is due 

 to Englishmen, our application of the dis- 

 covery to life has been done, on the whole, 

 in a niggardly, stupid, pig-headed, narrow, un- 

 onlightened way. When it has been well done, 

 it has been, as a rule, more by private enter- 

 prise—the enterprise of men like Mr. Ross — 

 than by an enlightened intelligence in our 

 State officials, 



A Deadly Disease. 

 The national slowness has its merits and 

 its uses, but national apathy is a deadly disease. 

 During all those ten yearsof "thought " human 

 beings have died in India of mosquito-borne 

 disease at the rate of about two a minute. 

 Five or six a second would perhaps not be an 



excessive estimate for the number of those in- 

 fected by mosquitoes during that time. The 

 ' consideration " of those responsible may well 

 be serious ; even a Napoleon has fewer ghosts 

 to haunt him. Mr. Ross does not ask for a 

 despotism to bother people who only want, 

 asthe phrase goes, "to be let alone." He pleads 

 for an intelligent administration interested in 

 human health. He has had experience of an 

 administration so little interested in public 

 health that, as he says, "we" (the mosquito 

 destroyers) " were forced to employ every in- 

 genuity to gain our object," the object often 

 being the suppression of burst cesspools in 

 people's cellars, and the filling up of open stink- 

 ing cesspools owned by the Government. Still 

 as he says, the difficulties can be surmounted, 

 and "popular administration does more for 

 the community than despotism." 



THE RUBBER EXHIBITION AND 



AFTER. 



(By James Ryan.) 



" Of rubber young and rubber old, 



" Of rubber hot and rubber cold, 



" Of rubber tender, rubber touch, 



" Praised be the Lord ! we've had enough !" 



Old Grace (slightly altered.) 



Now that the Exhibition at Islington is over 

 it is perhaps possible to co-ordinate a few ideas 

 out of the chaos of mixed impressions that so 

 colossal a show tended to produce in one's mind. 



Thirty-three (or was it 34?) countries or 

 Governments made the bravest show of their 

 best and innumerable manufactures, not only 

 of i ubber goods but of machinery and allied 

 articles, which filled a wilderness of space with 

 kaleidoscopic samples, wonderful photographs, 

 weird slices of savagery whirring machinery 

 and complicated cutlery. 



Plantation Rubbek. 



Out of it all Ceylon and Malaya came out 

 with the honours of war. Their exhibits lacked 

 the picturesque savagery and the artistic setting 

 of the Congo pavilion and the Brennus-like 

 tonnage that Brazil dumped into th« scale, but 

 they were put in a neat setting and showed the 

 commercial superiority of British plantation- 

 grown rubber in a marked way, while any 

 visitor in search of information was " coached 

 on the spot by experts such as Mr Barober, Dr. 

 Petch, Messrs. Baines, Golledge, lngleby, &c, 

 who spent hours daily in what was at times 

 (with the thermometer trembling on the verge 

 of the nineties) anything but a light task. They 

 often had, too, to "suffer fools gladly" with 

 but rare interludes of compensating humour, 

 as in the case of one gentleman, who, at the 

 conclusion of a half-hour's demonstration of 

 " Hevea from the V cut to the Vonesta," 

 wanted to know : " Have you ever any diffi- 

 culty in coaaglutinating your latex?" 



From the Oongo, perhaps, we might pick up 

 one tip for the future, and that is to copy the 

 beautiful little series of cut-out eceues repre- 

 senting : — 



1. The Virgin Judge 



2. The New Clearing 



3. The year-old planting and Kajan Bungalow 

 i, Rubber in Tap. 



