383 
AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THE 
STRAITS 
AND 
FEDERATED MALAY STATES. 
No. 9.] 
SEPTEMBER, 1908. 
[VOL. VII. 
WEEDING IN PARA RUBBER CULTIVATION. 
By J, B. Carruthers. 
Rubber cultivation in the East is a comparatively new industry 
and has not the advantages of long experience to help in deciding as 
to the best and most economical modes of cultivation. 
Experience gained in growing coffee, tea, cacao, &c., has been 
used in determining methods for the conduct of a rubber estate and 
it is perhaps natural that a successful tea or coffee planter should 
cling to those which he has found of value in his previous agricultural 
experience. 
In the same way the methods used in the cultivation of tea, 
coffee, &c., were to some extent the results of experience gained in 
England and Scotland in the growing of turnips, wheat* cabbages, &c., 
in a temperate climate. 
The desire to retain his own methods in a foreign country even 
when those methods are suited specially to his home land is a British 
characteristic. Forms of Government, clothes, games and other 
habits of life are introduced into countries where the climatic condi- 
tions are very different from that of his own country. 
In agriculture this characteristic has led in some cases to im- 
provements in native methods of cultivation but has also frequently 
caused the adoption of methods admirable in Europe but unsuitable 
for tropical and sub-tropical climates. 
In the case of weeding, the practice which obtains in the cultiva- 
tion of cereal crops in a northern country cannot be of great value in 
deciding what should be the method adopted in growing trees as a 
permanent cultivation, in a country, where the temperature and 
moisture are always favourable to rapid plant growth, where the sun 
is so powerful as to dry up all moisture from the surface layers of the 
soil, and where the rain often descends so heavily that in one day it 
may pour on the earth as much as in six months in England. 
In rubber cultivation it is advisable to attack the question with- 
out preconceived ideas and to use only the experience of conditions 
similar to those under which the rubber is to be grown. 
