54 
RUBBER PLANTING IN CEYLON 
table with a hand roller and much of the water thus expressed. The 
name of the estate is then stamped upon it with either a wooden or metal 
die, when it is ready for the heater room. The heaters used are simply 
charcoal ovens, the rubber being spread on wire screens above the fire, 
and left for three or four hours. By this time the pancakes have lost 
about 50 per cent, in weight and are beginning to assume a decidedly 
darker hue. Cakes in the condition described, if in South America, would 
be immediately marketed, but not in Ceylon. From the heaters they go 
to drying racks, where they are air dried for a month or six weeks, the 
RUBBER CURING HOUSE, CULLODEN. 
time depending somewhat upon the weather, and are shipped only after 
careful examination as to quality and dryness. The care which the 
planters are expending upon the preparation of the rubber is the best 
sort of guarantee that the quality will be sustained, and that the day 
will come when the name of a plantation on a cake of rubber will tell 
its value almost to a penny. To follow the rubber a dittle further, it is, 
when perfectly satisfactory to the planter, packed in chests, the counter- 
part of the regulation tea chest, made of “momi” wood that comes in 
shooks from Japan, each package containing about two hundred pounds. 
There is also a coarse rubber that is secured by picking the scrap 
from tapped trees. It is a very excellent rubber, and while I was there 
it found a market at 3s. while the fine was bringing 4.?. g\d. There 
