413 
growing room — be., space for the branches and leaves ot 
some of liis trees— it is preferable to pollard some ot lie 
trees, and allow them to grow slowly underneath the 
branches of the unprnned trees, rattier than to leave the 
decaying roots of dead rubber trees, which he has (ait down, 
dotted all over his fields. 
Cover Plants Instead of Clean Weeding, 
The question as to the relative advantages of clean 
weeding and the use of cover plants (the use of which has 
been advocated in my annual reports for the last three 
years) is gradually being seriously considered by the prac- 
tical planter, and many thousands of acres of rubber, 
certainly not less than 15,000, are now cultivated with 
various cover plants. 
It needs but little observation of rubber clearings to 
decide that an immense amount of top soil, containing a 
large proportion of humus, has been washed away from 
sloping land to the detriment, both present and future, ot 
the rubber. An examination of the water in the drams ot 
Hat land, which is dark-coloured when the clearing is first 
opened and gradually becomes clearer when many tons ot 
water have passed through the soil, will show that this same 
process of exhaustion of the soil is going on very rapidly 
on clean weeded flat lands though not to the same extent 
as on the hillsides. ■ A1 ^ ,, , « 
Most practical planters have observed that the roots ot 
plants in the tropics grow more quickly and vigorously 
when the earth where they are growing is shaded from the 
sum and for this reason the surface of nurseries is covered 
with a thatch of grass or other convenient covering. 
These arguments seem in themselves sufficient to in- 
duce a trial of cover plants; but the additional aigument 
that the process of clean weeding is continuous and the most 
costlv of all the work on a rubber estate before it comes into 
bearing should be a further reason for the adoption of the 
system of cover plants. 
Various cover plants have been used on acreages vary- 
ing from 400 acres, and practically in all cases with suc- 
cessful results. • 
It is unfortunate for the increase m the belief in tins 
method of rubber cultivation that a large number of the 
planters who tried cover plants did so on the weediest and 
worst-drained parts of their estates. It would be as tan 
to test a food, which is recommended for supporting work- 
ing men, on emaciated and abnormally weak peisons, and 
\o 
