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to ascertaining what quantity of rubber a mature tree will yield 
without being injured, a specimen has been tapped twice a week 
for the past three months and the coagulated latex (it is not all 
pure rubber, as I shall explain later) now amounts to a trifle over 
three pounds The experiment is going on, as the tree shows no 
sign of exhaustion either constitutionally or in the flow of latex. 
Early dawn is much the best time for tapping, and the operation 
should cease about 8 a. in. The quantity collected from each of 
these tappings has varied from half an ounce to two and a quarter 
ounces. 
What we have to do now is to raise nurseries of seedlings from 
the good trees and try to eliminate the bad ones. Being so hardy 
during long periods of drought, the Ceara tree would adopt itself 
readily to many of the scrub tracts at elevations ranging from 1,000 
to 3,000 feet, with an annual rainfall of 25 to 40 inches. We know 
of course that it grows vigourously at higher elevations where the 
rainfall is heavy. But there seems to be a doubt (although nothing 
is proved) if the outturn of rubber would be as plentiful and good 
under the latter conditions of growth. Personally I am in favour 
of the Maidatt, as the best location for a Ceara rubber indusrty on 
an extensive scale. This you will naturally think cannot be of 
much advantage to the planter, who is confined to the hills. But 
in a large concern of this kind the planter, with his matured ex- 
perience and larger capital, is bound to have a share sooner or later. 
It is now proved beyond a doubt that the Ceara tree is wholiv 
adopted to the climate of Southern India. It is also being proved 
that as it approaches maturity some varieties of the tree are highly 
charged with latex, and I may here state that the dry climate of 
the plains is ail in favour of a pure rubber being easily prepared 
from the latter. American imports of the rubber into the United 
Kingdom are valued at a somewhat lower rate than similar products 
of Para and Otstilloa. But with the improved methods of puri- 
fying the actual rubber bv the extraction of hurtful ingredients 
such as phosphates, resin and albuminous matter, the best tree of 
the future will be the one producing the largest quantity of pure 
rubber or caoutchouc. The latter is suspended in the latex fluid 
in the form of minute globules and needs to be separated in much 
the same way that cream is separated from milk. An ideal pre- 
paration of pure rubber would be to drain the latex from the tree 
by means of a siphon into a kind of churn where the caoutchouc 
is separated by centrifugal force. It follows from this that any 
rubber at once depreciates in value when it is allowed to coagulate 
with all its impurities as it is taken from the tree. A ball of rub- 
ber, for instance, taken from a tree a few days ago, may be full of 
hurtful ingredients rendering the whole mass subject to the growth 
of fungoid disease and putrefaction, results which are greatly aggra- 
vated in a damp climate. The old American remedy to prevent 
disease was sun drying and smoking. Bot that is only partially 
effective and does not dry the rubber. 
W e now come to a brief review of Castilioa elastica, which has also 
