The Hawaiian gazette., 1906-10-23
JAMAICA
RUBBER|NC
(Jamaica Correspondence OF London
Tolegraph.)

Tolegraph.)
My attention has been called to an
article ON rubber In the Daily Tclc.
graph of recent date, and have
thought that what I might say upon
the same subject would be of interest
to your readers, as coming from rub
Der planter in Jamaica.
Hitherto planters here have been PUT.
ting most of their eggs into one basket,
and thinking very little of any other
cultivation than that of bananas. Ba
nanas begin to give a return after cigh.
teen months; rubber after seven OF
eight years. There is no banana plant.
| ing in Ceylon. Hence the enterprising
planters there, not having had the pos
sibility of quick return for capital
invested, had to look ahead for what
they considered the best thing to put
| their money into. They did so years
ago, and found it in rubber,
During the last six years the public
garden here have distributed about 49,
900 or $4,000 rubber plants to planters.
For next year planting the director
has orders for n quarter of million
seeds and plants. This seems to be "a
| large number, although it is only suffi-
cient for 2500 acres, II planted through
cocoa, and one-half of this acreage if
| set out as plantation of rubber only,
and there are thousands of acres of
| land suitable for the cultivation of
rubber to be had at fair price. This
boom in rubber is to be attributed main
ly, | think, to lively, interesting cor
| respondence which appeared in the
Jamaica Daily Telegraph last Deccm-
ber and January. 1t IS also partly due
to the fact that banana planters be-
lieve that they are receiving too low
Il price for their fruit. Besides this,
good many are almost impatiently
! anxious to relieve themselves of the
worry and very hard work and the un-
| certainty of fair profit necessarily at
tending banana planting A good many
, have in the last few years been giving
more attention to the production of
| cocoa, and now they are mt last be-
ginning to believe in rubber.
Not being banana planter, had to
look ahead, and six years ago | set out
my first plants of Castilloa elastica
was not the first in the field. Two or
three other planters began before / did,
and they are the only ones who have
trees old enough and big enough to
tap. The growth where soil and shade
conditions are favorable is marvellous.
large number of my trees are well
above thirty feet high and are yard
in girth two feet from the ground. This
girth measurement is increasing at the
rate of at least three in, hes annually.
What the yield in latex will be | can
not tell, nor even guess. / know that
slight cut with a penknife causes
latex to flow as if there were pressure
behind, and am therefore not in the
least solicitous as to quantity The
proper time for tapping my trees will
not be before the next or the following
year. Castilloas, it is said, younger
than eight years have a larger ratio
of resin in their latex than when over
this age, and this ratio lessons year
by year as the trees grow older, so
that it seems expedient to defer tap
ping.
AS the cultivation of rubber is still
in it's infancy, little can with certainty
be said as to profits. A friend of mine
srroo no that h rao; ,,aa a. W." a."
0s co no Ina. no ieeoi'es 'ne sum Vi
~ "hoUahJ 1iV''' Vh'y hNe "ees' lie
mas never seen these trees, nor does
ne know their age. fropaply they were
FOREST trees "hen the iaha was some
years ago cleared Tor panama Plahtihg'
but ~ Is well-estapiished tact that
the yieid OF latex from tree increases
year by year at rate beyond arith-
mctlcai progression, ana That the tree
Is very iong-iived.
must say something about possible
storm damage. "A hurricane, such as
smote us three years a"o, levels to the
ground every banana within its scope,
making it necessary to clean up and
replant. A castilloa tree can hardly
be uprooted, as it is very supple. Its
head might be blown off or the tree
broken off twenty feet up. Well, should
this occur, it seems to me that it might
do good by saving one the expense of
pollarding; fort only came to my
knowledge yesterday-a suggestion has
lately been made by one of the author
tiles on rubber cultivation to thumb !
nail out the leading shoot of tree
when twelve feet to fifteen feet high,