42 
into light readily, and like all Death's head Moths is very quiet 
motion'ess 311 ' 1 "" ' ° Wn a COrner ° f the verandah and remaining 
Another enemy is the omnivorous caterpillar of the Atlas Moth 
{Attacm ftlas) [ found a full grown caterpillar of this together 
with one of the Death s head devouring the same leaf at the end 
the I M- r “ ary 'f SuCh „ b 'f cater P i,lars these make short work of 
the foliage ol a small plant like Rrucea, hut being large are more 
easily detected and destroyed. 
Mr. ARDENS REPORT ON PARA RUBBER. 
In September of last year Mr. Arden published an excellent 
report on the experiments which he had lor some time been making 
on the I ara Rubber Iree, Hevea braziliensis. The whole report 
interest 0 '' 8 ' t0 publish in extenso but a few notes in it may be of 
M ’L C ° p me " Ce f W i! h 3 Sh ° rt h ‘ 5t0r y of its introduction into the 
Malay Peninsula, but in respect of this it is only necessary to 
of , e he°P .I 6 ! * 1° o’ 6 6r aCC °' , " t P ubiished ^ the last number 
of the Bulletin. In the next section on cultivation, he deals with 
the locality suitable for planting, and points out the excellent 
growth of the tree in abandoned mining land in Perak, beincr rather 
inclined to condemn the selection of swamp land, quotL the 
Director ot .Agriculture m Zanzibar who states that trees pSnted 
there in typical rice swamps were nearly all dead, and also an 
b J . WlCKHA ^! 111 which he says that the rubber in the Tapajos 
and Madeira river districts whence our seed was originally derived 
occurred in well drained stiff soil in the upland plateaus and that 
the theory that it was a tree of the low-lying inundated forests is 
an error However the trees of the Singapore Botanic Gardens 
have certainly done very well m this low-lying inundated wet soil 
and Mr B°nn echaux , who had considerable experience in the 
rubber of the Amazons, stated that the best rubber came from the 
wet ,ow-lying ground by the Amazon river, which was constantly 
flooded, and that the rubber of the hill and dryer localities was in- 
.' OI \ 0n P ointlll g out to him a tree grown in the Gardens in 
stiff clay, and kept as an example of the bad growth made under 
such circumstances he said it was quite similar to those of the 
diy upland regions, and pointed out that the laLex from that tree 
was peculiarly yellow and not of the pure white color of those 
grown in the low swampy ground, a phenomenon well known to 
the rubber collectors in the Amazons. However there are also in 
the Singapore Gardens some very fine tall and healthv trees <?rown 
in low and dryer hills, and indeed in many places in "the Peninsula 
I have seen trees doing well in dry localities. 
Mr. Arden’s remarks on germination of the seed are well worth 
study, an. I it is probable that he is correct in his suggestion tha 
termites attack the trees through the cut end of the lap root, and 
that the latex protects the tree from these and other such pests so 
