34 
Mr. Wright raised the bogey of over-production with an 
array of figures in which the wild sources are to supply as much 
for the next ten years as they do now, in spite of the fact that 
they are diminishing rapidly, and estimating that the 250,000 acres 
under rubber in Indo- Malaya will be in bearing in 1915, which is 
impossible as Mr. Zacharias points out. The report concludes 
with pointing out not only how successful the Exhibition was and 
how well carried out, but its immense value in measuring the 
distance that the industry has accomplished, and showing what has 
been done and what has yet to be done, and all who have been 
there or read the reports of the meeting must fully endorse this. 
THE CEYLON RUBBER EXHIBITION, 1906, 
By J. C. Willis. 
Director , Royal Botanic Gardens , Ceylon . 
An extremely successful Exhibition of Rubber has lately been 
held (September 13th — 27th), in the Royal Botanic Gardens at 
Peradeniya, Ceylon, and marks a distinct stage in the progress of 
this great new industry, an industry which owes its inception and 
progress entirely to the forethought and aid of scientific men at the 
various Botanic Gardens of Kew’, Ceylon and Singapore. 
Extensive buildings were erected in the Kandyan (or.Sinhalese 
mountaineer) style of architecture, and were well filled with exhibits 
of raw rubber in its different forms from the plantations of Ceylon, 
the Malay Peninsula, anti India, tools for the tapping and collecting 
of latex, manufactured rubber and rubber goods, and other things, 
besides exhibits of raw rubbers from all corners of the globe. Two 
large sheds were also filled with machinery for the treatment of the 
latex, and there were interesting side shows as well. 
We do not propose to go into details as to the exhibits, but to 
give some of the chief facts connected With the industry, and some 
of the chief lessons learnt at' the exhibition. 
Ten years ago there was practically no rubber in cultivation of 
the - Para’ kind (Hevea brasiliensis), the kind that is now almost 
exclusively attended to. Seed was then all but impossible to 
obtain, and though a small “boom ” in this produce took place in 
Ceylon in 1898-9, the supply of seed was too small to allow it to 
go far. Only since 1902 has there been plentiful seed and the 
industry has expanded very rapidly till now in Ceylon there are 
about 1 10,000 acres, in Malaya about 60,000, and in other countries 
probably 40,000, say 200,000 acres in all, to say nothing of perhaps 
100,000 acres of Castillca elastica in Mexico. 
The primitive methods of tapping the trees in V’s with a 
hammer and chisel have now gone out, and the favourite methods 
are to cut spirals or herring bones on the trees, and pare the edges 
of the cuts at intervals of from 2 to 10 days, thus getting the 
advantage of the wound- response discovered by the writer in 1897 
and worked out in detail by Mr. Parkin in Ceylon in 1898-99. 
The second tapping of a given area gives more latex than the 
first, and the amount often continues to increase for some time. 
