n8 
RUBBER PLANTING ON THE 
height of twenty-two feet. The banner Castilloa was a seedling planted 
in the open, that measured thirty-two inches in circumference 
and twenty-five feet high. All of these trees had every 
appearance of health and vigor, and gave forth milk abundantly. 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, with the land more level and not 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 six feet. Anyone would not seem to need a more 
graphic illustration than this of the necessity for observing proper con- 
ditions in planting, and further, as a warning against planting in badly 
drained land or in the shade. 
It is well to note that where these failures appeared there were 
several wild rubber trees that we estimated to be twenty-five or thirty 
years old. They seemed to be perfectly healthy and bled freely. The 
only reasonable explanation of this is that they were seedlings that grew 
up slowly in the densest sort of forest when the tremendous surface 
growth was so luxuriant as to be able to partially drain the ground 
through its great leaf areas, and also lift and make it porous by the 
leverage of myriads of thrusting roots. The partial clearing of the land 
later stopped most of this aerial drainage, and the subsequent rotting of 
the roots allowed the ground to sink into a solid, water-sodden mass. 
The land at La Buena Ventura seemed to be first leaf mold, then 
a rich, yellow loam, three or more feet deep, and tinder that a blue, 
clayey ooze, as if from the bottom of a tropical ocean bed. It was rolling 
land, as a rule, very well drained, and capable of growing almost 
any tropical product. The Castilloa orchard, through which I tramped 
many times, had in it about two hundred and fort}' thousand trees, 
from one to 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 failure of a seedling. 
One result of mv early observation, and one that grew with each 
day's experience, was the conviction that a knowledge of climate, rain- 
falls, soils, drainage, etc., is an absolute necessity from the beginning, 
in the selection of suitable sites for rubber plantations. In other words, 
the expert tropical agriculturist, well equipped with common sense, is 
most likely to be the one who starts right. For example, one plans to 
plant the Castilloa. It is a soft, wood tree, a tree that from its physical 
formation is not built to stand high winds, that with its long taproot 
