( 11 ) 
should be able to bud about 200 stocks a day, with a 
proportion of success varying from 75 per cent, to 
90 per cent. 
It is possible by marcottage of the young tree when 
one year old to propagate it actually on its own 
roots ; the stock serving as a temporary feeder only. 
Further information on the vegetative propagation 
of selected stock of Hevea is contained in the Agri- 
cultural Bulletin, F.M.S., Vol. IX, Nos. 2 and 3. 
There have now been published a limited number 
of results of tapping bud-grafts in Java and Sumatra 
(where the operation was first carried out). These 
results do not show any marked superiority of 
budded material over seedlings of similar age, and 
one Dutch worker has recently stated in a lecture 
that bud-grafting may be of use only as a means of 
multiplying material for selection purposes, and not 
for planting up estates in the ordinary way. 
This conclusion is possibly as unduly pessimistic 
on the one side as the confident expectations of 
enormous yields were over optimistic on the other. 
The only safe view of the process at the present 
stage would appear to be that taken from the first 
by the Officers of the Department of Agriculture, 
that bud-grafting is an experiment, a necessary, 
perhaps a vital, experiment but an experiment. 
The Slump. The effect of the world-wide depres- 
sion made itself first felt in the rubber 
market in October, 1920, with a fall of price to 
52 cents per lb. in Singapore. This fall continued 
steadily till June, 1921, when the price was 25 cents 
per lb., after which there was a slight rise to 37 cents 
