474 
RUBBER TREES AT BUKIT RAJAH 
Plate VI. 
We give here a photograph of Para rubber trees grown among 
Ficus Elastica at Bukit Rajah Estate in Selangor. I he trees were 
planted in July to September in 1899, and the photograph was 
taken in November, 1901. The rapid growth and distinct habit 
of the two trees are well shown. 
THE HEVEA TARA ’, INDIAN RUBBER. 
Origin of the Introduction and Cultivation of the Tree, 
By H, A. WtCk' HAM. 
Although advertisements for sale of the seed of Para rubber 
(Hevea) at so much a thousand have now been commonly seen for 
some time past in all the planting Journals in Ceylon and the East, 
it is not generally known that to the initiation of the Government 
of India is due the fact that they are within the reach of the 
planting community at all. Any planter who has had practical 
experience with the seed of this tree will understand the difficulty 
which had to be encountered in getting the original stock plants 
established in the Eastern tropics at such distance from their pri- 
mitive home in the high land forests of the valley of the Amazon, 
In the first instance, as far back as the seventies, the initiation 
of the Government of India in backing liberally the recommenda- 
tion of Sir Joseph . Hooker enabled me to seize an opportunity, 
singularly occurring for specially chartering a steamship which 
happened to be up the Amazon River at the exact time of the fall 
of the ripe seed in the rubber forest. Had this not been so, I 
should never have been able to accomplish the feat of securing the 
large original stock from an only seed so prone to quickly lose 
vitality. 
Just now there seems to be a disposition in some quarters to 
deprecate the effoits made by the Indian Government as bearing 
on the method best for the cultivation of the Hevea. This seems 
to be exceedingly short-sighted and ill-advised. As a matter of 
fact, in the hands of the Government of India through their forestry 
officers, all such experimental planting or cultivation cannot be 
calculated to be other than object lessons of the greatest value to 
practical planters in all the equatorial colonies, in that it will 
furnish them with authoritative data (especially the Hevea) of a 
nature to be depended upon. 
The true “Para,” Indian rubber (Hevea) is to be found growing 
naturally within the immense forest-covered area of the valley of 
the Amazon and in the tributary rivers, including the head streams 
of the Orinoco. I found it abundant high up on the Orinoco, above 
the junction of the Guaviare (the latter stream by right, indeed, 
should be styled the head stream of the Orinoco). It is plentiful 
on the banks of the Cassiquiare — that curious bifurcation by which 
