29 
RUBBER SEED SELECTION. 
By A. H. Malet, 
(Manager, Trong Estate, Perak, F.M.8 . ) 
/ \NE of, if not the most important of the problems that faces the 
rubber industry at the present moment is that of seed selection. 
It is a grave reflection on those who are technically responsible for 
the safe-guarding of millions of British capital that so far not the 
slightest effort has yet been made to guard the industry from the 
inevitable results of neglecting to provide for a supply of seeds from 
wholesome vigorous stock. 
It is, moreover, as far as the writer is aware, the only tropical 
agricultural industry which is liable to this reproach. No sane 
planter thinks of buying any but tested seed when opening up an 
estate in tea, sugar, tobacco or cinchona, but hitherto almost any seed 
has been considered good enough for rubber. Individual efforts are 
made to secure seed from old trees, and certain well-known estates 
have in the past made considerable sums from advertising “seeds 
from well-known old trees,” etc., but the claims of these estates to 
have more virtue in their seeds as prolific milkers and disease 
resisters than seed from other less known properties rest on 
a very shadowy foundation. 
The question is not by any means an easy one to dispose of — 
further, it is almost an impossible one for the practical planter to 
undertake to solve. There are two main points at issue ; they are 
the propagation of good caoutchouc-producing trees and the 
re-vitalizing of the trees themselves ; of the two, the latter is certainly 
the more iinportant. 
The question then naturally arises, what is tne relation between 
the vitality or disease-resisting power of a tree and latex production ? 
Does it always follow that a strong healthy tree is a good milker 
and vice versa ? As far as the latex production of individual trees 
is concerned the whole industry, at present, is on an equal footing — 
but this cannot be said of the disease-resisting qualities of all planted 
areas and in the humble opinion of the writer what is mostly to be 
feared is inter- breeding and consequent degeneration. 
The flowers of the Hevea being uni-sexual, inter- breeding is 
impossible to stop, and thus one of the most important laws of 
Nature— namely, that vigorous growth and healthy life can only be 
secured when cross-fertilization takes place, is counteracted by our 
system of cultivation. In the jungles of the Amazon the law of 
natural selection is allowed full play and only the fittest survive, but 
