37 2 
as have been made on the subject, in daily journals whose corres- 
pondents do not fully understand what has been said 
There are two main points in the paper, one that chemistry may, 
ere long, be able to utilize the small quantities of Caoutchouc 
known to occur in other plants beside the well-known four or five 
important rubber plants ; and second that it may be possible to make 
rubber synthetically. 
For the first point to be one of real practical importance it would 
be necessary to find a plant which produces latex containing rubber 
which can be more easily grown and produces so much latex that 
even the small quantity of Caoutchouc it contains will be sufficient 
for it to compete with say Hevea braziliensis . Thus say a latex con- 
tains £ the amount of Caoutchouc r roduced by Hevea , the plant 
would have to produce more than & times the amount of latex to 
compete, as the extraction of the rubber from this thin latex would 
obviously cost more than from the richer latex. It is hardly probable 
that this would be discovered now. Still other latices might be ut- 
ilized in a small way, such as those of the Jack tree, which might 
possibly pay extraction in some parts of the world. But a discovery 
of this nature, ie. f of a method of utilizing the sticky immature rubber, 
or viscin as it is commonly called, would be of some importance to 
the Para-rubber planter, for by it he would be able to utilize the 
thin sticky rubber from leaves and twigs of his Para-trees and the 
tappings from the nursery beds, so that on the whole any such dis- 
covery, almost certain to be made would rather benefit him than 
injure his business. 
Synthetic rubber has been the bogy of many would-be investors 
of rubber, and no question is more often asked than is it likely that 
synthetic rubber will soon be invented, and the plantations ruined. 
As Professor DUNST AN writes: “ Rubber having all the qualities of 
good Caoutchouc has been made from isoprene, which has been pre- 
pared from oil of turpentinb. „ It surely needs hardly any pointing 
out that the slow growing expensive turpentine trees, inhabitants of 
cold climates where labour is extremely costly could not for a 
minute compete against the rapid growing Para-ruhber tree in 
a climate where labour is cheap, especially when from the 
Hevea we get the rubber fully prepared when the latex is drawn 
from the tree, whereas in the turpentine tree after drawing off 
the turpentine it has to be made into isoprene and then into 
rubber. Isoprene must be made far more cheaply than in this way 
to compete with Para-rubber. It is certain that we sr :.ll be able 
to lower the cost of the production of rubber very considerably 
in the next few years, perhaps to little more than half its present 
cost. Can any substance be found from which isoprene or any 
other hydrocarbon convertible into rubber can be obtained and 
converted at a cheaper rate ?. This is hardly probable. 
The vulcanization of latex at which Mr. Bambef, has been work- 
ing, was a subject of discussion many years ago in toe Straits Its 
commercial practicability depends on the possibility of starting 
