3i3 
groves of Ceara rubber trees at Lihue and at Koloa, Kauai. As 
the trees were large enough to be 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. Accord- 
ingly arrangements were at once made with both the Lihue and 
the Koloa Plantation Companies to permit systematic tapping 
tests to be undertaken. At first it was planned that the Division 
of Forestry should carry on the work, but as the Hawaii Experi- 
ment Station had a man available, which the Division of For- 
estry 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. 0. Bradford under the direc- 
tion and supervision of Mr. Jared G. Smith, then Director of 
the Station, and much valuable informaation was collected. The 
results of the investigation have been published recently as Bulle- 
tin Xo. 1 6 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 study of rubber production in Hawaii. At 
the beginning of this last summer it became apparent that further 
study on the ground was urgently required, particularly 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 Division of Forestry ; the Experi- 
ment Station to furnish the man to do the work, th* 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 at 
Nahiku. 
From the start the experiment has been planned with special 
reference to securing figures that shall have direct practical bear- 
ing on the commercial development of the rubber industry. To 
attain this result there was kept constantly in mind in planning 
the tapping tests the conditions that the rubber plantation manager 
must face daily in actual practice. To this end it .vas arranged 
that there should first be tried only the simplest possible methods 
of tapping, such as any laborer of ordinary intelligence could 
learn to do, and that all refinements of process be at the start done 
away with. It was further provided that any given tapping test 
should be made on a large enough number of trees to be really 
representative 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 labor- 
ers employed, in units of not less than one-half of an actual work- 
