long enough in work to say this. The account of insect and fungoid 
pests is not quite up to date, and the statement that the Platypus 
beetle causes a certain amount of damage to trees in the Straits 
Settlements is somewhat misleading* The insect only attacks dead 
wood, and will not touch living trees, hut mere or less hurries up 
the death ot a dying tree. No allusion is made to the canker 
fungus, or tin more serious Fames semi tost us, nor to the leaf-fungi, 
and even Ter me s Gestroi, is barely alluded to. Some of the numer- 
ous tapping instruments are described, and the well known Ceylon 
one is recommended; but this instrument is useful only for trees 
which h ive never previously been tapped, ft has been found quite 
useless for old trees, as the bark becomes too hard and irregular for 
its use. It would have been as well to have explained this. The 
author gives a long quotation from Dr. Weber as to the coagulation 
of rubber with formaldehyde, and attempted to carry out Dr. Weber’s 
instructions with Para rubber, and met with a failure as might be 
expected as one gathers from Dr. , Weber’s account that he was 
working with castilloa latex. It is well known that Formaldehyde 
will keep Para rubber latex from coagulating for many months, 
He suggests smoking the biscuits which has long been done, but 
somehow manufacturers seem to prefer them unsmoked, and states 
that artificial heat is not absolutely essential, but hastens the drying 
process which it does but as unless very slight ruins the rubber^ and 
it would have been better to warn planters against using it at all. 
Taken as a whole the book is a very useful little one for beginners, 
and contains a number of useful hints. New methods and processes 
for this work are constantly being discovered or suggested and per- 
haps a later edition will be full of the very latest information. 
The Editor , 
RUBBER TAPPING 
Amherst, Lower Bur m ah, 
January 21st, 1903. 
Agricultural Bulletin of S. S. and 
F. M. S., Singapore. 
Dear Sir,— Referring to the instructive experiments on rubber 
lapping by Mr. Machado in March, April, and again in the latter 
part of May which were not so satisfactory as the previous tappings 
owing to the trees being in bloom, I certainly think that you have 
solved the problem of getting the largest yield with the least injury 
to the tree, for young trees especially , and also of distributing the 
labor supply which is a very important point to be looked at in the 
near future. At the same time may I suggest that there were one 
or two drawbacks to its complete success in proving the value of this 
method of tapping, i. e., 
