AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THE 
STRAITS 
AND 
FEDERATED MALAY STATES. 
No. io.] OCTOBER, 1906. [VOL. V* 
SYNTHETIC RUBBER. 
At the meeting of the British Association this year at York, 
Professor Wyndham Dunstan delivered an important address on 
“Some Imperial Aspects of applied Chemistry” in which he shows, 
the importance of Chemical Science to the Agriculturist and that 
especially in the tropical portion of the empire, and points out the 
pressing need that the Imperial Government should recognize more 
fully than it has done, and at least as fully as foreign Governments 
are already doing the claims of scientific investigation to be regarded 
as the essential first step in the material and commercial develop- 
ment of our possessions. The same feeling runs through all the 
introductory addresses of the Association as yet published, and will 
be strongly endorsed by all thinkers. But to readers in the Eastern 
tropics his account of the chemistry of rubber will be of more special 
interest. He says — There is no more important group of questions 
demanding attention from the chemist at the present time than those 
connected with the production of India rubber or Caoutchouc. An 
enormous increase in the demand for India-rubber has taken place 
in the last few years and last year the production was not less than 
60,000 tons. Till recently the supply of rubber came chiefly from 
two sources, the forests of Brazil which contain the tree known as 
Hevea braziliensis the Para-rubber of commerce and the forests of 
Africa where climbing plants chiefly of the Landolphia class also 
furnish rubber. The increase demand for Caoutchouc has led to 
the extensive planting of the Para-rubber tree especially in Ceylon 
and in the Federated Malay States. Systematic cultivation and 
improved method of preparation are responsible for the fact that 
the product of the cultivated tree is now commanding a higher price 
than the product of the wild Brazil. It is estimated that within the 
next seven years the exports of cultivated rubber from Ceylon and 
the Federated Malay States will reach between ten and fifteen 
million pounds annually and that after fifteen years they may exceed 
the exports of the so called wild rubber of Brazil. 
The services which chemistry can render to the elucidation of 
the problems of rubber production and utilization are very nume- 
