452 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Jan. I, 1898. 
well raise! and drained, the soil being prepared 
in the same way as for vegetable or flower seed. If 
sown in boxes these should be put under the leaves 
of a house ; if in beds light removable shades must 
be put up to keep off the direct rays of the sun. 
The shades should be removed during rainy or 
cloudy weather and at night. 
Light sandy loam i=i most suitable for seedbeds, 
if the soil is stiff, charcoal dust should be mixed 
with it to make porous and prevent caking. The 
beds or boxes must never be allowed to get dry. 
5. This should be done exactly in the 
same way as for vegetable or flower seed which 
requires transplanting after germination. The figs 
are broken between the hands. As the seed is very 
minute the particles of the fruit are left with the 
seed and sown with it, no attempt being made to 
clean or separate the pulverized figs. In order to 
distribute these minute seeds evenly over the seed 
beds or boxes, a certain quantity of ash and soil 
is mixed with them. 
6. Germination . — Germination takes place from the 
end of April to the end of rains. Seed sown between 
October and January requires daily watering and 
screening from the sun, and will not germinate 
before the end of April or the beginning of May but 
seed sown any time during the rains will germinate 
in a few days {from five days to a fortnight). It 
follows the best time for sowing seed is during the 
rains that is from June to September. 
The embryo appears on the germination of the 
seed as a seedling having a pair of opposite coty- 
ledons with an entire margin destitute of incisions 
or appendage of any kind, with the exception of 
the notched or emarginate apex, oval in general 
outline, green in colour and of a glassy smoothness. 
The second pair of leaves shew a tendency to the 
alternate arrangement on the stem but appear at 
the same time. Their shape and venation are very 
different from those of the primary leaves for they 
have a central midrib and a distinctly coarsely 
crenate margin. The third pair of leaves do not 
appear simultaneously, and are distinctly alternate 
with a marked reddish colour. After this the plant 
is easily recognized. 
7. Flicking out . — When the seedlings are two 
inches high in the seedbeds or boxes they should 
be transplanted into nursery beds, and put out in 
lines about a foot from each other. The nursery 
beds should be well raised and drained but the 
soil need not be so carefully prepared as for the 
seed beds. Here the plants are kept till the fol- 
lowing rains when they are dug up and taken to 
stockaded nurseries in the forests and put out 5' x 5' 
on raised well drained beds; where they remain 
for two years till they are required for planting 
operations. 
8. Forest Nurseries . — Almost every animal will eat 
the young rubber plants, it is therefore impossibie 
to plant out small seedlings in the forest owing 
to the destruction by wild elephants and game, un- 
less each individual plant is carefully fenced in. As 
this is too costly and the rubber after it is 1-2 feet 
in height is very hardy and can be transplanted 
with ordinary care, at any time of the year (the 
best time in Assam is between May and July), the 
seedlings are kept in stockaded nurseries in the 
forest where planting operations are to take place, 
and remain there till they are 10 or 12 feet high, 
that is about three years after germination, when 
they are dug out and the roots are cut back 18 inches 
right around the plant and planted on the mounds 
in the forests. 
9. Planting operations . — In artificial planting it is 
found that the rubber grows best on mounds. Lines 
are cut through the forest 20 feet wide and 70 feet 
apart from centre to centre; in these hues 15 foot 
stakes are put up 35 feet apart. Hound each stake 
a mound is thrown up 4 feet high. The base of 
the mound is about 10 feet in diameter and tapers 
to 4 feet on the top ; on ihis mound the rubber 
tree is planted, care being taken that the roots are 
carefully spread out before may are covered up 
with earth. To prevent animals pulling the plant 
and wind blowing them down they ate tied to the 
stakes. 
The rubber tree can readilv be nro- 
pgated from cuttings, it only perfectly lipe young 
branches or shoots are used, but the tree raised 
trom cuttings does not appe.r to throw out aerial 
roots, and as the fu'ure yield of the tree probably 
depends on its aerial root system it is questionable 
Whether trees raised from cuttings ought to be used 
except where required only as shade givers, such as 
in an avenue. In the Chardaar rubber pli.ntation 
propagation by cuttings were given up very early, 
that IS about 1876. the plantation havin^^ been 
commenced in 1879. The best time to take cuttings 
IS May and June. 
1 1 rubber grows equally well on 
high land or low land, in forest land or grass land 
so long as it is planted on a mound and its roots' 
are not exposed to the sun. It is a surface feeder, 
but as soon as its roots appear above ground they 
must be covered with fresh earth until such time 
as the tree has formed sufficient leaf canopy to 
protect itself. — The Indian F'orester. 
THE EXTRACTION OF GUTTA-PERCHA 
FROM THE LKAVES OF THE ISO- 
NANURA GUTTA-PERCHA TREE. 
Mr. Bourdillon has sent as a copy of an iuterest- 
mg report on the above subject by Professor W 
Ramsay, Ph.D , f.e.s., of I'niversity College, London’ 
from which we make the extracts given below! 
Could not a somewhat similar process be applied 
for extracting India rubber from the leaves of Ficus 
elastica? Perhaps some of our readers who are in 
charge^ of rubber forests W'ould make experiments in 
this direction and let us know the results. 
The existence of a gum of a plastic nature in 
certain of the trees found in the M;,layan Archi- 
pelago w’as first indicated by Montgomerv. in 1832 • 
but it was not until 1847 that Mr. Thomas L bb 
sent Specimens to Sir Willian Hocker. The material 
extracted from this tree was named “ Gutta-percha ” 
or the ‘-Rag Gum,” to translate the word literally. 
The word “rag” refers to the appe.aranee of the 
gun before it has been kneaded into the usual com- 
pact form in which it is known in commerce In 
1843 the material was patented as an insulator for 
telegraphic wires by Messrs. \V. H. Barlow and 
T. Forster, and in the following year by Dr. Siemens • 
so that its value for the purpose for which it is 
now in ever increasing demand was early recognised. 
In 1849 Mr. Walker Breit laid the first cable, two 
miles in length, in the English Channel. It con- 
sisted of wire, insulated with Gutta-percha; and at 
the present date, with the exception of a small 
consumption for bottles and stop-cocks to resist the 
action of strong acids almost all the Gutta-percha 
produced is used to cover the wires of submarine 
cables. But the supply is far behind the demand. 
There is in existence to-day no less than 162,000 
nautical miles of cable, and in 1884 over 3,000 tons 
were exported to England, involving the destruction 
of 12,000,000 trees of thirty years old. Owing to this 
great destruction of trees, the quantity of Gutta- 
percha in the market has been greatly diminished 
and the price has risen accordingly, while the ma-' 
terial is no longer of such good quality as it used 
to be. Indeed, it is stated (“ Le Caoutchouc et le 
Gatta-percha, ” by E. Chapel, Paris, 1892) that the 
Chinese merchants are so much in the habit of 
adulterating the pure gum with resins from other 
species of trees, that it is not possible to find a pure 
specimen of Gutta in the market. The gums from 
species of Euphorbia are frequently used for this 
fraudulent purpose. ” 
“ There is great need to increase the supply of 
genuine Gutta-percha; and there is every prospect 
that a rich reward would recompense a successful 
effort to do so. ” 
