Excerpt from On Rubber and Ramie Cultivation in Perak and Chapter V of Tin Mining in Perak: Together With Papers on Ficus Elastic and Tapping of Para Trees at Kuala Kangsar, And, a Report on the Perak Museum

Seeds of Para Rubber were first obtained some twenty-four years ago, and the introduction is thus described in the Economic Products of British India On the 4th June, 1873, the Director of Kew Gardens received from Mr. Markham some hundreds of seeds which had been collected by Mr. J. Collins. Of these less than a dozen germinated, and six were in that year taken out by Dr. King to Calcutta. These did not succeed well in Cal outta, and it was accordingly arranged that Ceylon should be established as the depot for supplying young plants to the parts of India where Hevea cultivation was thought possible. On the 14th June, 1876, seeds were received at Kew from Mr. Wickham (who was paid for them at the rate Of £10 per 4 per cent germinated. Of these, plants were sent to Ceylon in 38 Wardian cases, in charge Of a gardener, and 90 per cent reached in excellent condition. It must have been some of these plants which were procured by Sir Hugh Low, for in his Annual Report for the year 1883 he says that the trees at Kuala Kangsar were six years old. III the report for the previous year he says that seeds and plants of Hevea b'raziliensis have been distributed to Java and Singapore, to Ceylon and to India. These original trees are therefore now about twenty-one years old, and the second generation of trees at Kuala Kangsar are some fourteen years old.

In 1887 some seeds were obtained from the Kuala Kangsar trees and planted in the Museum grounds, Taiping. The soil is very bad, the land having all been mined over, but still the trees have grown well and have attained, in the ten years which have elapsed since they were planted, a considerable size.

Finding that they grew so well I ventured, in 1891, to write to Sir F. A. Swettenham, the then British Resident of Perak, suggesting that they should be planted on waste lands and, as a result, Mr. 0. Marks, then Superintendent of Government Plantations, put out a number of trees at Kuala Kangsar, which are now about six years Old, and are doing very well It is much to be regretted that more were not planted at that time.

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