1925-09-10 — Page 2

THE HONGKONG DAILY PRESS THURSDAY.

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ROMANCE OF RUBBER

TELLING OF THE BIRTH OF AN *INDUSTRY"

SEPTEMBER

Immedtely he reached home Wickham rushed tikow, whare, Sir Joseph Rooker had bant's cleared in a Mirry, and adil prepared for the reception of the scoda. They arrived just in time four per There is,mor romance in the story of cent. germinated satisfactorily and soon for the rubber plant grows rapidly- the world's great industries than in all specimens were on the way to Calcutta, the ** yellow-back" novels that were ever Ceylon, Rangoon, and Singapore. They published. Take the case of rubber. The Wardian cases, which had rools of glass, were placed in specially-prepared boxes,

story of its advent, as a modern factor and were as carefully stowed, in the ship in the commercial world is far less than as if the plants they abeltered. had been fifty years old yet how many people worth their weight in gold-as they were, a million times over. It is a matter of realise that for sheer romance it is worthy ne little interest that when these plants Lo rank with Wedgwood's triumphs in were distributed some were sent to the pottery, the Elizabethan discoveries of Botanical Gardens of Java; but they are believed to have died. Mr. Murton, whe tobacco and the potato, and the boyish successfully installed the plant in observation of a tea-kettle's steam that Singapore, also introduced it to Perak, was to lead to the locomotive? What where he left it in the capable hands does rubber mean to all but one in every

of the Resident, Sir Hugh Low. ten millions of the people who Bave ange thing to do with it. The resilient tyres. that make rapid travel pleasure, a mesus for defying the weathe's worst behaviour; or especially during the last few weeks--a mere counter in the perilous game of "grsting rich quickly."

i

THE PARENT SEVEN

In spite of the care that was lavished upon them, all but, seven of the plants that cached Singapore were dead in August, 1878, when Mr. Walter For Look over a post in the Singapore Botanical Gardens. But they had been plaged in andry; shallow soil, and Mr. Fox-who All these things are the harvest of one had learned at Kow all that Mr. Cross could teach him about the conditions man's far-sighted patriotism, of another's most favourable to the Para rubber tree- selfess toil-and of a British shipmaster's had the survivors replanted in low fab land at the foot of a slope. There they to undertake a unparalleled decision

fourished. They were treated with long voyage in ballast when he might greater care that a pet dog receives front have come home with a full cargo. It its doting mistress; and from their seed is a story that emphasises the debt that fresh stock began to rise around them.

But the planters were making money we all owe to the quiet, self-denying out of coffee, sad for years they laughed labours of our public servants; and it at the idea that these immigrants from also serves to illustrate the almost in. the Far West would pay them better. To credible blindness, that will occasionally rubber trees in Penang were used merely day it seems incredible that the first

affict the keenest minds in the world as a decoration for the municipality's of commerce. For the great rubber highways. Fortunately, the staff of the plantations of the East are the offspring Botanical Gardens were men of the same of an idea or that great botanist, Six breed as Mesara Cross and Wickham, Joseph D. Hooker, who was director of they never lost faith in the rubber tree a the Botanic Gardens, Kew, from 1855 future in Malaya, and, despite the in- to 1885; and it took many years of patient difference of the planters, methodically argament to persuade the Eastern extended their stock. planters to grasp the fortunes that were literally staring them in the face

Sir Joseph Hooker was always on the lookout for "some new thing" that would beneft not only the Motherland but her Colonies and dependencies also, a search which he prosecuted through his assistants

"In due season they reaped." Coffee began to slump, and the planters had, to seek an alternative crop. One of them was the lato Mr. W. W. Bailey, who just prior to the war carried off one of Ascot's big prizes with Bachelor's Button. Few people cleared more over the rubber boom in many parts of the world. It was in than Mr. Bailey, yet there was a time 1873 that he first persuaded the India when his acquaintance with the subject Office to send out to the Amazon. Mrwad of the slightest. He became genuice James Collins (afterwards Government ly interested, however, and made a con- botanist, in Singapore), who obtained and to take over all the rubber seeds some hundreds of seeds of Fare rubbers from the Botardalis, and on his return" published an account

This did yet please e other plantora, of the method of collecting, and Breparing who had it long inst become alive to the rubber. About a dozen plants were rubber's passibilities.They protested raised at Kew from his seeds, and these and the overnmen rescinded Mr. were sent to Calcutta but the climate Bailey's controthough he received was unsuitable, and they all died. This proportion of the seeds at half the other men, were then employed Mr. price his brother planters had pay Cross and Mr. H. A Wickham, who is for theirs. Then rubber was planted in now Sir H. A. Wickham Mr. Cross, earnest to give birth to an industry that the well-known introducer of the cinchona explays thousands of men and millions into India, in addition to introducing sterling of capital; to endow the motor. Para rubber, also brought back the Cascar with wings; and to make a hundred tillon Elastics, or Central American other new contributions to our conven- rubber, known in South America asience and our comfort. caoutchouc ball, and the Ceara rubber.

But who spares & thought for the man Both of these species, however, have been who raced the clock from South superseded by the Fara rubber-Heves America to Kew; and who, looking at Brasiliensis. But it was Mr. Wickham two old rubber trees, that still Hourish in who, in 1876, ascended the Tapajos River the garden at Singapore-the survivors and collected the seeds which were to of the original seven-has the slightest become the foundation of the rubber in notion that these are the parents of dustry of the East. I

Malayalamoat important industry, the origin of scores of fortunes, and the SAVING SEEDS FROM DEATH,

source of a whole population's “ daily Many other explorers must have seen bread "3 This story was worth telling the wild Para rubber tree--Hevea Brani- for its own sake, but it will be worth the liensis-growing in tropical luxuriance in more if it serve se a timely reminder of the jungles of Brazil, and the value of what the Empire awes to its disinterested ita product had for centuries been dimly | scientists who may not themselves proft appreciated by the South American from the fruits of their own discoveries, Indians. It remained for Cross and Wick-Fand are not oven allowed to hold shares ham- to attempt the experiment of trans in a rubber company. plantation; and they were under-no- illusion as to the odds against its success. The seed of the wild rubble tree quickly lose its vitality with about seven weeks of the day it drops it becomes sterile Wickham had made a collection of 70,000 of these seeds, but he was far from the coast, and he knew he would have to travel his hardest against the clock if a single one of them was ta germinate at Kew. As quickly my he could he worked down the Tepejos to, wards its mouth, all the time fantalised by the probability that he would not find a ship when he reached there, and that every seed might be dead before be could get afleet,

1. But his luck was propitious. "A British tramp" hnd just discharged her cargo, and the skipper was waiting, Micawber- like, for something to turn up.” It did, but scarcely in the shape that he expected. And it required all the suusjvencis" thay Wickham could « com- mand to convince him that 70,000 seeds in three boxes represented the cargo he. was looking for. Eventually the skipper agreed to take the three boxes, run horda in bállást, and trust the British Gover rent on the word of the explorer, for payment. Wickham must have been s

ble man

Tot even then he was not out of the woods. The ship, with its precious bur- den, worked down to Para where it had to pass the scrutiny of the Customs officers. Without any great violence to truth Wickham called his seeds botanical. kpecimena," - and the tramp received a clearance that would never have been given it had the Customs men known what it really contained

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