Rani bong trees approaching 4 years of age, and the early treat- 
ment of these trees has naturally been a subject of much concern 
to the management. We take it that at three years of age our 
trees in this particular locality are about 25 feet in height and have 
a spread of about 30 feet in diameter, the foliage being almost 
impenetrably dense and reaching right down to, and in some cases, 
spreading out along, the ground. The soil is of course the richest 
drained alluvial, and the trees are apparently much more at home 
in it than on the hills, where the growth is very much slower, and 
nothing like the same quantity of leaf is to he seen, i mention 
this particularly because it seems to me that this dissimilarity in 
growth renders it probable that treatment which suits our Ram- 
bong on the flats may not be the right thing for hill cultivation, 
and it will therefore be of great value if we can collect information 
from those who have experience of both. 
I have found that cutting off the lower branches, pruning (to 
lighten the head) and removing the smaller aerial roots does un- 
doubtedly' give the tree a shock and checks its growth, as Mr. 
Irving says, and, for some time past, because we did not know 
what to do and could not find out, our trees have been left to 
themselves, to grow as they chose. Mr. Thos. North Christie of 
Ceylon, who was over here recently, was very interested in this 
question, and we were able to show him several trees, which, upon 
parting the leaves and branches and pushing our way in, we found 
to be “casting” numbers of both branches and aerial roots. It 
seemed as if these were absolutely smothered by the dense shade 
and rotted off quite naturally by themselves leaving it a compara- 
tively easy matter to move about, when once inside, round the 
stem and main branches of the tree. Some of the branches which 
were thus dying off w r ere as thick as a man’s wrist, and it was 
perfectly obvious that the trees were thorougly healthy and that 
this singular condition was merely an effort of nature and not a 
result of disease. 
We are still watching developments and not touching our trees 
with the knife at all, and my belief is that we shall have an infi- 
nitely bigger tapping area to work upon, when we once get to work 
in earnest, than if we had trimmed our stems up ; whether the 
latex will be as rich in caoutchouc, when collected from the thick 
branches as well as the aerial roots and stem remains to be seen, 
but I am sure the yield must be far heavier. 
It may be of interest to your readers to hear that a tree on Bukit 
Rajah, under 4 years old, has just been tapped and yielded in two 
days, half a pouud of dry scrap rubber — stem, branches and aerial 
roots were scored all over with a sharp knife, the rubber being 
peeled off from the cuts the next day ; on the third cutting the 
flow of latex was so poor, that the tree was left alone for the time 
being; no damage at all was done by the cuts and in a month 
hence, 1 hope to see the treatment repeated. 
Yours faithfully, 
E. V. CAREY. 
