Sept. I, 1903.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
173 
RUBCEK PLANTING ON THE ISTHMUS QV 
TEHUANTEPEO. 
INTERESTING EXPERIENCE OF 
MEXICAN CASTILLOA. 
( As seen by the Editor o£ The India Rubber 
World.) 
The site of the plantation ' La Ventura ' five 
yeai's ago was virgin forest. At that time Mr 
James 0 Harvey and his son Clarence purchased 
for themselves and their associates (a private cor- 
poration) 1000 acres of land aud prepared to develop 
it along the most practical line". When the senior 
of the two first came to Mexico it was with the 
idea of planting coffee, but after months of study 
and a personal inspection of most of the Isthmus 
country he decided that India rubber offered the 
best opportunity for profit, an<l therefore has 
turned the larger part of his land into a plantation 
of Castilloa eladica. I an) enlarging upon this a 
trifle because, to my certain knowledge, the gentle- 
man under consideration is not only an expert 
horticulturist and botanist, but has studied tropical 
agriculture in Central and South America, and in 
the East Indies and West Indies, and beyond 
this he and his associates offered no stock for 
sale, but went into the business to make 
money out of their own investment of capital; en- 
ergy, au'i knowledge. Suc!i a plantation must, 
without fail, give the visitor the bast possible view 
of the practical end of the business. There are, of 
course, many sucli pi-ivate estates in the tropics, 
bi't it happened that this was the one that I know 
moat of and to visit which I had a most cordial 
invitation. 
Here I was, therefore, installed in the palm 
thatched house, with its earthern floor and 
bamboo walls, that for five years had been the 
home of these hardy pioneers The domicile was 
situated at one end of a long ridge, on each side of 
which, with a rare eye to effect, were planted 
gorgeous flowering and folinge plants, and trees 
valuable forfiuit anu for ornament. Very modestly 
the presiding genius showed me sixty-five different 
species of palms, probably the largest collection in 
tne Americas. Not only were there palms native 
to the tropical parts of America but there were 
specimens from Java, Ceylon, New Guinea, 
Queensland, the Fiji islands, New South Wales, 
and a score of other remote places. These were 
gathered, not as part of the planting proposition, 
but from a plant lover's interest alone, which they 
seemed to appreciate by growing luxuriantly. 
Then too, I must not forget the collection 
of orchids that hung from the bamboo lattice 
outside of the house, and clung to the trees 
on K.ll sides ; nor the orange, lemon, lime, grape- 
fruit, banana, and plantain trees, a notable part 
of the garden equipment. I looked with interest 
also on the vanilla vines, the cacao plan- 
tation, and the twenty-five varieties of pine- 
apples, but my chief thought was rubber and so, 1 
soon found, was his. I do not wish to make my 
planter friend blush but when I found the work he 
was doing, how widely he was consulted by 
planters both in Mexico aud in distant tropical 
lands, T was more than ever impressed with my 
wonderful luck in thus 'striking oil' when first I 
began to bore. So I asked questions aud questions, 
and questions, and took notes most copiously all 
the time. 
22 
YIELD OF LATEX. 
One of the first points that I wanted settled 
was whether here or elsewhere, there were 
Castilloa trees either wild or cultivated 
that did not yield latex. So we both started out 
to finil one such tree by cutting; the outer bark — 
indeed during all of the trip I cut trees by the 
hundred just to prove this point — but found none 
except in one instance, which will be related later. 
I was much interested also to note the diiTerences 
in the latex as it issued forth. In some instances 
the tree would send forth a perfect shower of 
milkwhite drops, which coagulated rather slowly, 
while another near by would exude a thicker fluid 
that began to coagulate almost immediately. The 
natives claim that this latter tree i s -imply so rich 
in rubber that it retards the flow and that aftei a 
little tapping it corrects itself and the latex 
becomes more fluid. 
The younger trees all gave out abundant latex, 
but those that were less than four years old gave 
a milk that seemed immature ; that is, it dirl not 
coagulate into dry hard rubber but remained 
quite sticky. I noted also a curious thing in 
connection with this, which was that in the 
younger trees the latejj began to mature first near 
the base of the tree, while up toward the branches 
it still remained of the sticky sort. But we found 
no trees in this district that did not yield latex 
abundantly. 
GKOWTH OF CASTILLOA. 
At " La Ventura" I was able to institute some 
exceedingly interesting comparisons between the 
growtli of the rubber tree under favorable and 
unfavorable conditions. In both eases the trees 
were Castilloas planted from selected .seed. In 
the first instance they were planted in the open, 
about 9 feet apart, on rolling land which had good 
drainage. Measuring tho circumference of the 
trunks a foot above the ground, I got a fair 
average of 23 3 inches, and an estimated average 
height of 22 feet. The banner Castilloa was a 
seedling planted in the open that measured 32 
inches in circumferen ce and 25 feet high. All of 
these trees had every appearance of health and 
vigor and gave forth milk abunaantly. From the 
records shown me, they were a trifle over four 
years old. In the second instance, grown in 
partial shade, such as produced fine cacao, wioh 
the land more level and nob well drained, the trees 
being planted at exactly the same time, and from- 
the same lot of seed, I got an average of 4-'6 
inches for circumference a . foot above the 
ground, and an average height of 6 feet. 
Anyone would not seem to need a 
more graphic illustration than this of the neces- 
sity for observing proper conditions in pi anting 
and further, as a warning against planting in 
badly drained land or in theshade. 
The Castilloa orchard, through which I tramped 
many times, had in it about 240,000 trees from 
one Co four years of age. All of them were planted 
from the seed, except a small percentage taken 
from nursery stock to make up for the occasional 
fail 'ire of a seedling. 
One result of my early observation, and one 
that grew with each day's experience, was the 
conviction that a knowledge of climate, rainfall,' 
soils, drainage, etc., is an absolute necessity 
from the beginning in the selection of suitable 
sites for rubber plantations. In other words, the 
expert tiopici.! ag: iculturi^i, well equipped with 
