April 1, 1903,J THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
699 
RUBBER IN MEXICO: 
OVER 8 MILLION TREES PLANTED 
AND Hi MILLION IN NCJRSEllIES. 
We begin to think thxi Mr. John Davley 
and some other Ceylon planters who have 
made their home in Mexico are right as to 
the great future before this favoured land, 
and that the London Deputation which 
included, if we remember rightly, Mr. 
James Sinclair and Mr. John Clark, among 
other' practical men, were a little hasty in 
deciding against taking up land and estab- 
lishing a plantation west of the Gulf of 
Mexico. The number and variety of crops 
that are successfully grown in a territory 
which extends from 7 to 32 degrees North 
Latitude is, of course, very notable ; but 
the chief factor to financial success is found 
in the great and ever-growing market "next 
door" in the United States. Making due 
allowance for optimism and exaggeration, 
it is not possible to doubt the liberal returns 
got from coffee, cacao (indigenous) and 
the very rapid growth of the planted 
rubber trees. Plants (of Castilloa, the 
indigenous rubber, we presume) put out in 
July 1900, at a distance of 18 feet apart, 
had a girth of 8 inches by Febrviary 1901, 
of 20 inches a year later and of 25 inches 
in November 1902, and early this year, the 
branches were touching each other across 
the 18 feet. "Seeing is believing" and the 
statements are accompanied by illustrations 
which appear to bear out the figures given 
At Henaratgoda and Peradeniya it took 9 or 
10 years for Castilloa trees to attain a girth 
of 40 to 43 inches ; but they have done 
better with Major Gordon Reeves in the 
Matale valley ; and Mr. Gildea the other 
day showed, for Ambanganga estate, a 
growth of Castilloa trees in 2^ years up 
to 26J inches girth. In this Ceylon heats 
Mexico, the indigenous home of Castilloa ! 
On page 700 we give a letter to the 
New fork periodical " Modern Mexico " 
(February 1903) from Mr. Gtorge Cullen 
Pearson, which bears the impress of 
truth ; and he shows that Messrs. Lewis «& 
Peat of London have valued his sample of 
rubber, taken from trees three years old, at 
2s 8d per lb. and pronounced it " thoroughly 
marketable." We say nothing of the great 
things Mr. Pearson expects to do— nor of 
the anticipation of an income of £15,000 from 
100,000 trees in their 7th year, to be doubled 
by the 9th year ; but this is certain, that 
without the stimulus of such statements, 
rubber-planting has already become a vastly 
extended industry in Southern Mexico, 
although as yet there is probably not a 
single plantation which has arrived at the 
.age for its rubber to be regularly harvested. 
In other words, the rush into planting has 
taken place during the past four or five, 
and chielly within the past two and three, 
years. Nevertheless, on certahi of the 
coffee and cacao gardens there are old trees 
planted simply • for shide purposes and 
69 
we are told that some of these, said 
to be 7 an.l 9 years old, when tapped 
experimentally, yielded 2 lb. of rubber 
per tree ; another statement is that 
trees 6 to 8 years gave 1 lb, each on an 
average, of marketable rubber ; while yet 
a. third account mentions .3.50 trees (a few of 
them 20 y6ars old) which yielded altogether 
800 lb. of clean rubber. 
But now to turn to the future of rubber 
in Mexico. Our contemporary of the "India 
Rubber World " of America has caused a 
census to be taken (by circular letter ad- 
dressed to all the incorporated rubber-plant- 
ing companies operating in Mexico) of there 
total plantings and they have had a response 
from 26 Companies (one beginning work in 
1897, two in 1899 and the rest of 1900 or since.) 
The number of trees per acre ranges from 
200 to 2,000 1 800 seems a favourite numbei-. 
Here then we have 5,400,000 trees planted 
out, and over 11,400,800 plants in nurseries 
ready to put out, say in 1903-4. The work 
done, or to be done, by Companies not re- 
porting may be taken to cover any over- 
s.mguine estimates, or exaggeration, or failures 
in nursery plants ; and our American contem- 
porary reckons that numerous private plant- 
ers in Mexico represent perhaps half as 
much again as the Companies. This would 
give us a total of over 8 million Castilloa 
trees planted out in Mexico, chiefly under 
three years old, apart from the indigenous 
forest trees. 
We are naturally led to compare our pro- 
gress in rubber-planting in Ceylon and the 
Straits Settlements with the wonderful start 
made in Mexico by American Companies, 
during almost the same period (the past 
three or four years); but our information is 
not sufficiently up to date as we write, for 
any but a rough estimate. We cannot sup- 
pose, at the most, that the planting in Ceylon 
of Para and Castilloa (or even if we count 
some Ceara and other kinds) exceeds 4 to 
5 million trees ; while the Straits and Borneo 
may also have 4 to 5 million trees planted out 
of all ages. 
Is there anything in the Mexican and our 
Eastern figures to cause an alarm as to over- 
production in the future of five or six years 
hence ? We do not think so. Suppose that 
the close of this decade, say 1909, sees 13 or 
14 million planted trees yielding a pound of 
clean rubber eacii, what would this crop be, 
— however pi'ofitable to the growers as we 
expect it to be— to the growing requirements 
not simply of the world; but of the United 
States alone ! The latter seems to require 
at present from 30 to 50 million 
lb. of rubber a year, for the manu- 
facture of bicycle tires alone ! When 
the numerous other uses for rubber are con- 
sidered, and the immense development in 
new industries, which, we are assured, would 
follow a slight reduction in price, of the 
raw product, we may well bid good-speed to 
all the Mexican, Straits and Bornean, as 
well as to our Ceylon, planters of rubber trees 
—whether Para "or Castilloa— and feel assured 
that there is " a good time coming " for 
most, ir not all, of them- 
