48 
tivation. Its discovery has compensated the African out- 
put for the loss of Landolphia rubbers through excesive 
tapping. Some nice samples of clean Funtumia were ex- 
hibited from the Gold Coast and Uganda — and improved 
methods of preparation are being carried out in these pos- 
sessions— but much of the trade rubber is prepared by 
boiling, a method open to many objections; and the market 
price of such rubber is about 2/8 with tine hard Para at 
4/6L 
Catpodiuus lanceolate s and (Jlitandra H c a r icpuesici net 
are the so called root rubbers. These are semi-herbaceous 
plants found in the Congo and as far as Portuguese South 
AA/ est Africa and North West Rhodesia. These little 
plants grow from 1-2 foot high and contain some latex in 
the leaves and stems but principally in the creeping under- 
ground rhizome. To obtain the rubber the whole plant is 
removed, the roots are cut into lengths, dried, and after- 
wards macerated in water for some days when the caout- 
chouc can be beaten out, but as the resulting rubber is 
mixed with particles of the plant such impurities detract 
from its market value. 
Its growth is probably too slow for remunerative cul- 
tivation, as it does not appear to be utilized in any of the 
many plantations now being formed in many parts of 
Africa. 
T a berna Montana f crassa is a dwarf growing tree 
native of Seirra Leone and supplies of the rubber from 
that country and the Gold-Coast. This plant is grown in 
the Botanic Gardens of the Straits and at Kuala Kangsar, 
Perak, where it attains the dimensions of a moderate sized 
tree. The yield of latex is scanty and the percentage of 
caoutchouc low. Another species of Tabernamontana 
supplied much of the rubber exported from Madagascar 
after the Landolphias had been exhausted but this, too, in 
turn, soon largely diminished owing to excessive tapping. 
A third rubber producing species T. T hurst oni — a moderate 
sized tree — grows in Fiji and produces some rubber. 
Mascarenhasia elastica (N’harasika or Mgoa Rubber 
tree) a native of British and Portuguese East Africa sup- 
plies an addition to the rubber ’exported from those coun- 
tries. The annual value of the rubber (including Landol- 
phia Kirkii) exported from British East-Afriea averages 
£20,000. There are a few specimens of this species in the 
Singapore Botanic Gardens. 
