1 June, 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 479 
All the above trees are, or were, common in Perak, and (Mr. Wray 
believes) are found generally throughout the southern portion of the Malay 
Peninsula. i 
Their habitats may be defined as follows :-— 
(a) Getah Taban Merah, the tree which yields the best quality of gum, 
grows in the valleys and likes plenty of moisture, being often found 
on the banks of rivers with its roots actually in the water. 
(b) Getah Taban Sutra lives in the ravines of the hills up to 800 or 
1,000 feet, and also likes to be near water. It would appear to be 
a rare plant. 
(c) Getah Taban Puteh is an alpine species, and is rarely seen at less 
than 2,000 feet above sea-level. — 
(d) Getah Taban Chaier is found on hilly ground, principally at the 
base of the higher ranges, up to nearly 2,000 feet. 
(e) Getah Taban Simper likes hilly ground, and has been found up as 
high as 2,500 feet, but it is most common on the low hills at the 
foot of the higher ranges. 
(f) Getah Sundeh grows on the alluyial plains near the sea-coast. 
Unless the above facts are taken into account, the cultivation of these 
trees would probably not be an easy matter, for, as each sort has such well- 
defined limits when growing in a wild state, presumably they would not thrive 
out of those limits in cultivation. It would appear to be more a matter of 
climate than of soil in most cases, for at certain elevations the chances are 
largely in favour of finding plants of the variety you would expect to meet 
with, quite irrespective of the nature of the soil. 
Given the right species for the situation chosen, there would seem to be no 
very great difficulty in establishing plantations. It would be necessary either 
to plant the young trees close together or to plant them in partly cleared land, 
as, for the purposes of producing a supply of gum, they must have tall, 
straight, branchless trunks. It is probable that the best plan would be to 
clear the undergrowth only in a piece of forest land; then plant the gutta 
trees; and one or at the most two clearings, at intervals of, say, a year, would be 
all that is required. At the end of that time the trees would take care of 
themselves, 
One great obstacle in the way is the scarcity of seed. This is only 
produced by the old trees, and the trouble of collection is therefore consider- 
able. These large trees are every year becoming more scarce and, at any rate 
in Perak, the day is not far distant when all these seed-bearing trees will have 
been destroyed. The young trees will not bear transplanting, and all attempts 
at propagating guttas by cuttings have been failures. 
A tree of Getah Taban, measuring 2 feet in diameter, at 6 feet from the 
ground, and about 100 feet high, gave 2 lb. 5 oz. of gutta. Unless there are 
two growing seasons in the year, the annular rings ona section of the tree 
showed that it must be 100 years old. ‘Trees of this size could not be planted 
closer than 50 feet apart, or 17 to the acre; and it appears obvious that a yield 
of 89 lb. of gutta to an acre of land, after a lapse of even thirty years only, 
would not bea profitableinvestment of capital. At5s. per lb., it would only be 
worth £9 lis, or 8s. 8d. per acre per year. This estimate is based on actual 
experiment. By the present native method of felling the tree, only one- 
fortieth of the gum in the bark is extracted, not taking into account that in the 
branches and leaves. Supposing that three-fourths of this, or thirty times the 
‘amount of gutta given above, could be extracted, the total value would be, from 
17 trees, £292 or £417s. per acre. The whole question lies in the economic 
extraction of the greater portion of the gum in the tree. t 
Mr. Leonard Wray, Curator of the Perak Museum, set to work to try if 
such results could not be obtained, and he sent home to Kew in 1883 four 
barrels of the dried bark. This was operated on with bisulphide of carbon, 
but, although 18°6 per cent. of gum was recovered, the experiment was reported 
to have been adverse to further shipments. 
ul 
