Oct. I, 1897.1 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
perty and refused. Tlie subsequent profits from 
the coffee on the estate can have been next to 
nothing. 
Sucli were the ups and downs of fortune at- 
tending- the last days of the reign of King Coffee. 
Tea, 
tliough it will surely have its bad as well as 
its good tinie.s, is hardly likely to be subject to the 
convulsive fluctuations of fortune that attended 
the downfall of coffee. 
On retirement from Messrs. Keir, Dundas & Co., 
Mr. W. il. Leake hesitated as to his course in 
the future. His partiality for Ceylon and life 
there was finally overborne by family consider- 
ations ; his elder children were growing- up and 
continuance in Ceylon would necessitate separation 
for educational purposes. He deternaned to find 
work, if possible, at home. In 1874, co-operating 
with Mr. T. G. Wainwright, now Treasurer 
of St. Thomas’s Hospital, he started the 
TUNNEL PORTLAND CEMENT WORKS CO., LTD., 
buying as the site for its operations a property of 
some 700 acres on the Esse.x shore of the Thames near 
Purfleet. The cement trade was at that time at 
the lieight of its prosperity. In common with nearly 
all productive industries in England, it has since 
come under changed conditions owing to the con- 
tinued fall in prices. The fall in prices having 
been general without any compensatory fall in 
wages, shareholders in those industries, wherein 
labour forms a large proportion of the cost, have 
had to stand by while the ])osition of the labourer 
has been year by year improved. In these cir- 
cumstances it may be hoped that the good of 
the many, may in the long run prove to be the 
good of all, and that the wiiler diffusion of 
wealth, consequent on tlie economical position, 
may be surely, though silently, broadening the 
foundations of the prosperity of the United 
Kingdom. 
Certain it is that demand in many branches 
has lately acquired a way of increasing by leaps 
and bound beyond all past experience. And 
though facilities for extending production are 
now-a-days such that no continuance of very 
high prices can be expected ; yet in many 
depressed industries thei-e have been of late 
signs of recovery and of a return even to the 
capitalists of a certain sober, healthy prosperity. 
It is pleasant to adil that Portland Cement, 
the leading industry of the Lower Thames and 
Medway, seems to be sharing in this revival. 
Here, we leave the story of one of the best- 
equipped, most enterprising and most re-pected 
Colonists who ever laboured in Ceylon. The 
work of Mr. MARTIN Leake is by no means 
over: though in his 67th year — 14 of those spent 
in the tropics — any one looking at Mr. Leake 
would take him to be at least ten years younger, 
and, humanly-speaking, his spare athletic form 
and vigorous constitution afford a guarantee for a 
number of years of usefulness; not least in con- 
nection with the Colony in wliich he has done such 
good and prolonged service. So mote it be ! 
Austhalian Ouange Plants, — Messrs. Thompson & 
Co. have imported a parcel of young orange plants 
from Melbourue to the order of some upcountry 
planters. The plants were sent up a couple of days 
ago and we hope to hear of their vigorous growth. 
— Cor., local ‘-Examiner.” 
229 
INDIARUBBER IN THE HUKONG 
VALLEY. 
[By H. N. Thompson, Assistant Conservator 
OP Forests, Burma.] 
The India-rubber as found growing in the Rukong 
valley is not a gregarious tree. It appears scattered 
generally through the dense evergreen forests, but 
nowhere reaches the density per acre, say, of an 
average teak forest ; occasionally a family gtoup of 
four or five trees may be met with, but these are 
very rare indeed, and the usual thing- is to come 
across a mature tree every 200 or 300 yards in the 
richer forests. The average of four valuation sur- 
veys made at the headwaters of the Namkong chaunq 
gives --ISla-ge trees per acre. Ficus elastica is essen- 
tially a light-demaoding species, aud though an 
evergreen and associated with and growing amongst 
dense shade-bearers no tree can be more exacting 
in its demand for light. Whenever it is surrounded 
with dense shade it will be found that this tree, 
in order to escape from it, has grown to enormous 
heights, in many instances towering head aud 
shoulders over every other tree in its vicinity. Trees 
of great size were met ou the upper slopes (3,000 
feet) of the Loima hill at the headwaters of the 
Namkong chaun;;, and some of them were certainly 
the largest trees that I have ever seen of any 
species whatever. In accordance with its light- 
demanding character seedlings growing on the ground 
are extremely rare, and though I searched diligently 
for them ou many occasions on the rich soil sur- 
rounding the parent trees (but covered with dense 
shade) I was never able to find one. The only 
seedlings seen by me were growing, as a rule, in 
the forks or crevices in the bark of light foliaged 
trees ( Dalhcnjias, etc.) at a great height from Dhe 
ground and occasionally on the half-rotten trunks 
of dead and dying plants in places where from wind- 
falls or otherwise clearings had been formed in the 
leaf canopy. The young seedling thus gets a good 
start over its rivals in the struggle for existence 
and grows rapidly up the stem of its host encircling 
the latter with its aerial roots and sending them 
downwards towards the ground till they form gieat 
supports on which the main trunk of tire fig stands ; 
meanwhile the host is gradually killed off and 
eventually disappears altogether, and the rubber tree 
is left standing 011 five or six or even more thick 
aerial roots. These roots often start from a height 
of 60 to 90 feet, and attain girths of from five to 
eight feet. The main factor determining the dis- 
til bntion of Ficus elastica seems to be an excessive 
humidity of the atmosphere. It appears to be able 
to accommodate itself to many varieties of soil (pro- 
bably because its earlier stages are passed on a 
host) aud to be indifferent, generally speaking, to 
rather large variations in altitude, though growing 
best at from 2,5'JO to 3,500 feet. The absence of a 
very high temperature would also seem to favour 
its growth, as the species is unknov/n from the other- 
wise suitable local! iss in Southern Tenasserirn. 
However, this latter point may or may not be correct] 
and very likely the question may be complicated 
by the correlation of factors that we are not as yet 
cognizant of. But this much is certain, that it is 
found growing in abundance on the Loimaw hill at 
an altitude of 5,200 feet, and is reported from high 
altitudes in the Jan Muu Bun mountains to the east 
of N’tupusa and on the nothern aud southern water- 
sheds 01 the Taron river, the higuer crests and peaks 
of which are covered with large masses of snow in 
the winter. Prom what I could make out of the 
information given by the Singpho Chiefs of Niugbyen 
and N’tupusa, it does not appear to actually grow in 
places that are subject to snowfalls, but is found in 
all the deep, damp gorges on the sloi,es on sucn 
hills, very often creeping up the former to con- 
siderable altitudes. The winter snowline in the 
latitude of the nortlieiu portion of the Hukoug 
valley (latitude 27° uortli) would appei- to lie at least 
somewhere between 7,0UU aud S,00u teei. As Colonel 
Woodthoi-pe aud Major Macgregor, on their return 
