477 
enquiries) growing scattered along the wet margins in going up 
the lower Amazon or tributaries, whereas the true forests of the 
“Para” Indian rubber tree, lie back on the highlands, and those 
commonly seen by the enquiring traveller are but ill-grown trees 
which have sprung up from seeds brought down by freshets from 
the interior. 
As a matter of fact, the whole of the Hevea which 1 procured 
for the Government of India were the produce of large-grown trees 
in the forest covering the broad plateaux dividing the Tapajos from 
the Madeira rivers. The soil of these well-drained, wide-extending- 
forest covered tablelands is a stiff soil, not remarkably rich, but 
deep and uniform in character. The Hevea found growing in these 
unbroken forests rival all but the largest of the trees therein, attain- 
ing to a circumference of io ft. to 12 ft. in the bole. These forest 
plains, having all the character of widespread tablelands, occupy 
the space betwixt the great arterial river systems of the Amazon, 
and present an escarped face, which follows, at greater or less dis- 
tance, and abuts steeply on the igapo or bagas t.e., the marginal 
river plains subject to inundation by the annual rise of the great 
river. So thorough is the drainage of this highland that the people 
who annually penetrate into these forests for the season's working 
of the rubber have to utilise certain lianas (water-bearing vines) for 
their water supply, since none is to be obtained by surface-well- 
sinking, in spite of the heavy rainfall during great part of the year. 
The Hevea is much more amenable,, better adapted for systematic 
cultivation, planting, and working than any other of the rubber- 
yielding trees with which I am acquainted for instance, the Ficus 
elastica of the Eastern tropics or the Ficus regia of New Guinea, 
and probably of Malaya ; the various species of jungle rubber vines 
of the East and of New Guinea and tropical Africa; and, to a less 
degree, the Castilloa and Ceara of tropical America. The remark- 
ably shapely cylindrical form of the lower trunk (the workable part 
of the tree) from the ground upward renders it singularly adapted 
to reqular extraction of the rubber latex, and although the latex of 
the Hevea does not appear to lend itself to the process of separa- 
tion by centrifugal separating machines, as do the Castilloas of 
Guatemala and Southern Mexico, the “ Para’" rubber, produced by 
a simple smoke process which has been devised always commands 
the best market price. 
In New Guinea I was in 1894 first to discover a vine growing in 
the forest there which produces a very fine quality of Indian rubber. 
There is also a large forest tree, native of these forests, (a species 
of ficus) which yields a good class of rubber in quantity. None of 
these, however, being so suited (so amenable) to cultivation in 
plantation as the “Para, ” it is much to be recommended that cul- 
tivation of the Hevea be encouraged in that late and undeveloped 
possession ol the British Empire. Now that it has been established 
in the East, there should be no great difficulty in bringing it down 
from Singapore ; and I have myself seen large tracts of forest and 
jungle land in New Guinea which are admirably adapted for the 
planting of this, the premier rubber-producing tree. 
