10 
conditions are similar to those of our own mountain slopes, 
would seem to be promising for experiment, provided seeds can 
be obtained. 
WILD AND CULTIVATED RUBBERS. 
Practically all the rubber thus far marketed has been derived 
from wild trees. The collection of rubber by the native races 
of all countries has been extremely destructive, in many in- 
stances resulting in the extermination of the rubber-producing 
species over wide areas. This factor alone has had much to do 
with the rapid rise in value of this article. The discovery of a 
new rubber-bearing species or of a new forest in some hitherto 
unexplored region means the rapid destruction of this source 
of supply, because governmental control of the native rubber 
gatherers is absolutely impossible, and attempts at restraint or 
supervision worse than futile. The native collector wants to 
get as much as he can today, so that he will not have to work 
tomorrow. Enormous forest trees, perhaps hundreds of years 
old, are felled or hacked and mutilated so that they soon die and 
rot, and for his trouble the native secures on an average hardly 
one per cent, of the total amount of rubber in the bark, but that 
which he gets costs him only the labor of gathering it. There 
is no investment of capital. Xo taxes have been paid on the 
lands producing the raw material, and there has been no ex- 
penditure for labor or permanent improvements and executive 
management of the enterprise. 
In the case of a plantation for the production of rubber on a 
commercial scale, the points to be considered are not merely 
the adaptability of certain rubber-bearing species of plants to 
certain soils and climatic conditions, but it is fully as impor- 
tant to so conduct the enterprise during the first unproductive 
years that the total capital invested when production finally be- 
gins shall not be so large as to preclude the possibility of aver- 
age dividends. The robbery of cultivated trees after the man- 
ner of the native rubber collectors is of course entirely out of 
the question. A plantation management must evolve methods 
of gathering rubber in such a manner that the trees will not be 
destroyed and yet so that they will produce to the very maxi- 
mum of their capacity. Fungus diseases and insect pests will 
undoubtedly appear. The question of how much or how little 
cultivation is necessary will have to be worked out in a prac- 
tical way. In other words, the cultivation of rubber is an ex- 
periment and until it has passed the experimental stage no one 
knows to what extent it will be profitable. 
