69 
SOME SUGGESTIONS. 
The progress of the industry of cultivated rubber seems now to be 
settling into a steady business, but it still is capable of improvement 
in many ways, and the young planter who thinks he has learnt all 
there is to learn after six months residence on an estate probably 
will be found to be still ignorant of what he has to learn. In the last 
number of the Bulletin we quoted some important articles on the 
irregularity of the product from the manufacturers point of view. It 
is not that the product is exported merely in different forms, crepe, 
sheet, block or scrap, the complaint is that the various portions of the 
samples are not similar and do not vulcanise in the same w ay. It is 
absolutely essential that each lot put through the machine in the fac- 
tory should be homogeneous, and grading the sheet or crepe will be 
one of the important duties of the planter in the future. It is not 
always easy to see the cause of the difference in vulcanizing of differ- 
ent sheets. It may be due to differences in the age of the trees tapped, 
or to differences in preparation. Possibly, there is occasionally too 
much hurry in the drying shed or possibly when smoking is used 
there is irregularity in the amount of smoke used or duration of 
the smoking. It seems quite clear that in future all rubber in sheet 
or biscuit will have to be smoked, and smoked well. This will require 
material for making the smoke, which, material, whether of wood, 
coconut husk, or other fuel, must be sufficiently abundant close to the 
estate, and sufficiently cheap. The estate whose manager has des- 
troyed all timber accessible in order to plant more rubber trees and 
has no other smoke material to fall back on will probably suffer 
considerably. It was the exhaustion of firewood and timber acces- 
sible to the plantations that was the main cause of the death of the 
pepper and gambier industries in Singapore. 
Some time ago a specimen of crepe was brought to me spotted 
all over with black stains, the manufacturer alleging this was due to 
the oil used in the crepe machine which had got into the rubber. 
The specimen was an extremely weak, rotten rubber, speckled all 
over with dirty looking spots of some mould or other fungus, and 
its state was obviously due to careless and dirty work. Probably 
the water used in washing was foul, or the latex vessels or other ap- 
paratus dirty. Now, there is no reason why the rubber sheds should 
not be kept absolutely clean. I have seen the drying sheds and 
storing sheds in plantations in contact with the coagulating shed. The 
floor of the latter mud with puddles of water and latex decomposing, 
a sloppy mess all round the drying shed. The drying shed, which 
should be on a slope so that rain should run off, was put on a flat 
piece of ground which in rain was beaten into muddy puddles. Can 
anyone wonder that th? rubber gets affected by moulds and bacteria 
breeding in the slops around? The washing and coagulating sheds or 
any sheds where water is used and likely to lie about in puddles 
should be a good distance away from the drying and storing sheds 
which should be put on a dry slope if possible. Again many of the 
