196 
A GLIMPSE OF RUBBER PLANTING 
Castilloa in land that had formerly been used for bananas and were 
getting excellent results. 
All of this leads up to what I think I have before written, that a 
deep, open soil, particularly one that cakes at the surface a little and in 
which there is no chance for standing water, or nothing more than a 
very brief inundation, is what the Castilloa calls for. 
The interest in the planting of India-rubber in Costa Rica dates 
back some twelve or fifteen years. As early as 1892 it was reported 
that the wild trees near the cities and along the coast had been practically 
exhausted, and that what rubber was gathered came from the more 
remote valleys. In that year the amount of rubber that came out of the 
country was a trifle over six thousand dollars worth, less than half the 
RUBBER AND COCAO ALTERN ATI NG, SHOWING METHOD OF CLEANING. 
amount shipped the preceding year. It was about this time that the 
government began to take an interest in the cultivation of rubber and 
passed laws against tapping the wild trees, and also offered prizes — one 
for eight thousand dollars and another for five thousand dollars — for 
the best plantations of Castilloa rubber. Both of these prizes were taken 
in 1894 by Minor C. Keith, who installed two plantations near Port 
Union, the trees, some twenty-five thousand in number, being planted with 
bananas and about one hundred and fifty rubber trees to the acre. At 
the time the prizes were awarded the trees were said to be eight or nine 
years old. When the writer visited Costa Rica, no record of them 
could he found, although they should have been somewhere about twenty 
years old, and certainly big enough to tap. The gossips of the country 
