58 
if not better, than in our stiff clay soils. A ten days’ lack of rain 
does not affect it at all. It stands a much longer drought in French 
Indo-China. 
Some other factor than these must be the cause of the failure, 
and this can only be determined on the spot by careful and thorough 
investigation. 
The Director of Agriculture takes an equally gloomy view of all 
the other rubber producing trees. 
“ Castilloa Elastica is more at home in Jamaica though sadly 
liable to scale and apt to die if tapped at all severely. The cost of 
collection of this rubber in the West Indies is found to be about 2/gd. 
a pound (Why ? Ed.), while as a shade for Cocoa it has proved most 
pernicious. It has yet to be shown that the cultivation of Castilloa 
is profitable in any part of the world.” (All the same the Mexican 
planters think highly of this cultivation, and talk at least of big pro- 
fits). The Funtumia is a hardy tree, but of very doubtful utility as a 
cultivated plant 
The Manihot rubber is again of poor promise in Jamaica. A 
large tree of M. Glasiovii, growing in the Economic section at Hope, 
has just been cut down, and found to be almost devoid of rubber. 
The virgin rubber (Sapium sp.) of Colombia proved to be very 
difficult to raise from seed, and great losses of expensive seeds 
occurred. A few hundred plants have been distributed to planters 
in the Hills and good growth is reported. I have no faith in this 
tree for cultivation, as a commercial source of rubber, from «uch 
information as I have been able to gather.” 
This part of the report finishes by adding Cotton to the Index 
Expurgatorius of Jamaica cultivations and a warning against the 
cultivation of vanilla. 
Possibly, this depressing state of affairs is due in some measure 
to what is described as the guiding policy, which was laid down that 
the department should pursue the obvious agricultural needs of the 
Colony and concern itself with staple industries rather than dally 
with interesting novelties and curiosities of doubtful industrial value 
and that the aims and interests of the scientist find experimentalist should 
be made entirely subservient to those of the planter and producer in the 
island. Knowledge is power and science is merely the latinized form 
of the word, and matters can hardly be expected to improve if the 
man who knows and the man who tries to find out are pushed aside 
for the old out-of-date Empiric system. Of course the scientist and 
experimentalist are employed at Botanic Gardens to help the Planter 
and Producer, but it is especially in a country where things fail that 
th, y are wanted to find out why, and to show that there is a good 
reason for the failure, and whether it is possible to turn it into a suc- 
cess or not. Such researches into the cause of the failure of rubber 
cultivation would be invaluable. — Ed. 
