The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-20
A WORLD FAMINE
OF RUBBER UNLIEELY--THE
 SUBSTITUTE

Reported From the French Congo May
 Not be Sufficient, hut the Discovery That Para Rubber Trees May be
 Planted and cultivated at High As-
 titudes is of Worldwide Impor- tance.
 A French botanfst has discovered in
 the Congo a plant whose hbrous roots produce an excellent rubber, suitable l for electric work. automobile tires, &c. Yet there is probably not enough of the I plant in existence to relieve rubber long as the plant must, of course, be de- stroyed to get the roots, while the rub
 Der tree is tapped like sugar maple.
 The consumption of rubber in this country has doubled in seventeen years, and is very rapidly increasing. Other countries coming more recently into 1 the ranks of rubber users are increasing their use still more rapidly. Within | twenty years the production of "Para" " rubber has increased threefold, and meanwhile an enormous supply from Africa has been developed, Yet such l has been the increase in demand that
 prices have tended constantly upward, land market supplies are smaller than ] they have been for years.
 United States Consul Kennedy, for in stance, reports from Para this seasons total export of rubber at 2S,110 tons, Eagainst 23,73S tons for the core 1 spending period last year.
 The natural supply of rubber is linn lited. There. is no longer any unex- plored country in which rubber press l can exist. There are forests known to contain rubber which have not yet been lessened every year. The gradual open ling of new fields is offset i'll part by the lexhaustion of old one. Under more in ! teIligent supervision the existing rubber
 tres in Brazil and Bolivia and elsewhere may long be preserved. Still, in time all naturel supplies will be taxed to their utmost, and then. without new re
 sources, the growth of the rubber in dustry will be impossible. This means that rubber must be planted and cultivated. Several mill ! totlS VI IupDCl tiCC6 I'VE zbGCtll
 thus far, but so recently that only a \ few thousand have reached a produc-
 tive age.
 It has always been supposed that l rubber could be cultivated successfully only withing very restricted limits
 these being loW-lying tropical forests
 especially deadly to white men but re- lcent experiments in Ceylon and the
 Straits Settlement seem to shGw that rubber can be grown in cool. healthy
 cIimates at an elevation of from 1000 ! feet above the sea.
 MT. F. ]. Holloway, a local planter,
 writes to .he Times of Ceylon that he
 has .op5ed some trees at an elevation of 1900 feet with good results Trees at ! this elevation. although q good lower
 down. they require one ineisIon in the
 morning. The cups are enlptied at A. M. and replaced under. the same cut Immediately, and are again enptied at 3 F. NJ. thus giving yield from one cut las would be obtained from two cuts on i trees at the lower elevation.
 T think" writes MT, Holloway. this is a very important fact, and ore that
 will, no doubt, be noted by all concerned lin Para. It is probably due to the cooler atmosphere at the higher ele- \ vation which does not tend to coagulate
 the pure latex as it exudes from the
 wound, where's at the low elevation, the temperature being much higher, the lla.ter scarcely has time to run into
 the cups before it eoagulates on the way lowing to the heat.
 l Obviously if rubber can be cultivated
 as profitable crop in decent climate i there is less reason to fear that line
 men need ever go without rubber
 gloves or boys without bicycles .--New
 York World. .