RUBBER AND RAMIE CULTIVATION
IN PERAK

AND CHAPTER V oF

TIN MINING IN PERAK,

BY
L. WRAY, JUN.,

M.1.E.E., F.Z.S. COR. MEM, P.S., ETC.

TOGETHER WITH PAPERS ON

TPCUSS ELASIICA AND: TAPPING OF | PARA

TREES: AT KUALA KANGSAR,

By

A. B. STEPHENS AND R. DERRY.

AND

Mime, Onl CON THE PERAK MUSEUM.

‘Taiping :
PERAK GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

——_

1898.

Price 25 Cents.

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Perak UWauseum Motes,/ Wok. EK Part 1.

ON RUBBER AND RAMIE CULTIVATION,
TIN - MINING, “Erc,, Ere:

ON

RUBBER AND RAMIE CULTIVATION
IN PERAK

AND ‘CHAPTER V OF

TIN MINING IN PERAK,

BY
ES WRAY; JUN,

M.I1.E.E., F.Z.S. COR. MEM. P.S., ETC.

TOGETHER WITH PAPERS ON

THGOS: ELASTICA AND. TAPPING OF “PARA
DREES- AY KUALA KANGSAR

By

A. B. STEPHENS AND R. DERRY.

AND

ma REPORT ON THE PERAK MUSEUM.

Taiping :
PERAK GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

1898.

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CONTENTS.

PAGE

Some Account of the Tin Mines and the Mining Indus-
tries of Perak, Chapter V., by L. Wray, Jun. Hee ok
Ficus Elastica, by A. B. Stephens ... oe sas sag | OO
Rubber Growing in Perak, by L. Wray, Jun. ber eee

Report on the Tapping of the Para Rubber Trees at
Kuala Kangsar, by R. Derry ... oe ca ve LOR

Correspondence relating to the Introduction of Ramie
Cultivation into Perak a se sis wow 208
Annual Report on the Perak Musem as as Sr 3)

List of the principal additions to the Musem Collections
during the year ending December, 1896 ais sce VLZ8

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE TIN MINES AND THE
MINING INDUSTRIES OF PERAK.

By L. Wray, Jun.

CHAPTER V.
HYDRAULIC MINING.

Hydraulic mining, as carried on in California, is a method
of employing a jet of high pressure water to break down the
eravel or earth that contains the gold, and wash it into a long
line of boxes. As it passes down them the earth and gravel
get broken up, and the gold is caught and retained in the
bottom of them by becoming amalgamated with the mercury
which is placed there for that purpose. The bottoms of the
sluice boxes are covered in different ways with wood, iron or
stone, with the object of affording interstices in which the gold
and mercury may collect, and also to withstand the wear and
tear of the water, stones and gravel which, naturally, is very
great.

The top part of the sluice is narrow and deep, with a fall
of one in nine or twelve, and it should be long enough to
thoroughly break up the clay. Then come one or more series
of iron bars, which are so arranged that the fine gravel passes
through them while the stones are ejected. The lower part
of the sluice is wider and at a lesser grade, so as to give the
gold more chances of sinking and coming in contact with the
mercury in the bottom of the boxes between the riffle bars.
These are bars of iron, or wood, or iron-faced wood, set at
intervals either across the boxes or in the direction of their
length. The sluices are often over a mile in length, and some
tons of mercury are put into them to collect the gold.

At intervals the current is diverted from the sluice boxes
proper into wide riffle-covered tables, known as under currents.
In these, the flow being less, the finer gold settles down between
the riffles and is caught by the mercury. As many as a dozen
of these under currents are put into some of the sluices,

The principles involved are therefore very simple, firstly, the
pay - dirt has to be broken up and, secondly, the heavy portions of
it allowed to fall down into the spaces between the rifles, where

82 TIN MINING IN PERAK.

they come into contact with the mercury and remain until the
time comes to clean up the sluice. It is evident that the amount
of water, and the size and grade of the various parts of the
apparatus, must be so adjusted that the sand and gravel in no
part of the length of the sluice shall settle down into a compact
mass at the bottom of the sluices or between the riffle bars,
for wherever packing, as it is called, takes place that portion of
the apparatus is rendered inoperative, The whole of the
material should be in a state of movement, gently, on the tables
where the fine gold is to be caught, but still in motion.

The difference of the conditions between the requirements
of a sluice to catch gold and to catch tin are as follows; the
catchment area must be much larger and, as the tin cannot
be caught and retained by solution in mercury, the sluice must
be cleaned out at more frequent intervals or the tin will drift
down the sluice and pass into the tail-race. The object aimed at
is to produce on the tables and between the riffle bars a rich
concentrate, which can be periodically removed from the sluice
and washed in an ordinary washing box until it becomes suffi-
ciently pure to be sent to market.

In the year 1892 the first attempt was made in Perak
to work tin land by hydraulic sluicing, at Teluk Bharu, about
two miles from the town of Ipoh, in Kinta, by the Leh Chin
Mining Company, under the management of Mr. F. D. Osborne.
Eight-inch pipes were laid down from the intake at the foot of
the Kledang hills to bring the water down to the mine. They
were about two miles long, and there was a fall of some two
hundred feet, the monitor being used with a two-inch nozzle.

The land, however, proved to be unsuited to this method of
working, as it was too flat and there was insufficient fall to
allow the tailings to discharge into the Pari river. The result
was the tailings rapidly banked un, filled the sluice boxes
and stopped all further work until they could be dug out
and the channel cleared again. The Government also objected
to the tailings being discharged into the Pari river, as they
would be likely to silt up the Kinta river, which was then,
and until the railway was opened, in 1895, the highway on
which all the traffic with the port of Teluk Anson was borne.

The pipes and monitor were therefore taken up and moved
to Gopeng, where they are employed to bring water from the
hills to near the town of Gopeng, to work the land belonging
to the Gopeng Tin Mining Company, Limited. The erection
was begun in August of 1892, and was carried on under the
direction of Mr. E. R. Pike, who resigned his appointment

TIN MINING IN PERAK. 83

as Inspector of Mines under the Government to become the
Manager of the Company. This position he held until his
death in 1895. Messrs. F. D. Osborne and C. Ephraums then
took over charge of the works.

The pipes are eight inches in diameter, the pipe line is
about five miles long, there are some two and a half miles
of open ditching, and the intake is two hundred and forty-
nine feet above the mine. The pipes are riveted sheet steel, and
join by slipping one into the other, they having a slight taper
sufficient to allow of this. The monitor works with a two-inch
nozzle as a rule. The whole plant was procured from America,
which is the seat of the hydraulic mining industry. As first
put up there was a sluice of about four hundred feet in length
and three feet in width, near the Ipoh-Gopeng road. It worked
very unsatisfactorily, and the tailings were so good that a
number of people used to wash them by hand in “ dulangs ”
and make a living out of selling the tin-sand to the Company
at quite a low price.

When the mine was visited in July, 1896, the plan of work-
ing was as follows. During the night the jet (a two-inch one)
was used in cutting down the earth, which was from six to nine
feet in depth. ‘T'welve Chinamen were employed at this night
work. The gravel and earth was partly washed into the rock-cut,
and the rest left to be dealt with in the day time. In the morn-
ing a gang of forty Malay and Kling women go into the rock-
cut with “dulangs” and scoop up the sand and earth in it, wash-
ing it off in the stream itself, then take up a second dishful and
so on, putting the tin sand into a can or other receptical after
washing each “dulang”’ of earth. Meanwhile the monitor plays
with reduced pressure on the earth cut down during the preced-
ing night, and washes it into the ditch. This goes on for eight
hours on ordinary days, and for twelve hours occasionally, when
it takes longer to get through the material cut during the night
before. For this eight hours’ work the women are paid 40 cents,
and for the twelve hours 60 cents.

The rock-cut is merely a rude ditch cut in the stiff clay,
“kong,” underlying the pay dirt. It is some five hundred feet
long and about two feet wide. It has a few wooden stops, but
neither riffles nor riffle stones, nor is it paved with wood or
stone. The women stand all along at intervals in it plying
their “dulangs.” During the day ten men, mostly Chinese,
are also employed, thus bringing up the complement to sixty -
one hands for the one jet. These day men look after the
monitor, clear away timber and roots, clean the crude tin-sand

84 TIN MINING IN PERAK.

in “lanchuts”’ and afterwards with brass sieves, used like a
“ dillueing”’ sieve, until it is clean enough for the Straits Trading
Company to buy, that is to say from seventy to seventy-three
per cent of metal.

This system, if it is permissible to dignify it by such a term,
is a combination of hydraulic ground sluicmg and panning.
Fortunately the land being piped is so rich that this rude
method of working pays handsomely. With a properly con-
structed sluice, working for say twenty hours a day, about double
the amount of ground could be cut down and put through with
from one third to one half of the labour. The earth is free and
loamy, so there is little or no trouble with clay balls or stones.
The tailings are reported to be too poor in tin to be worked at a
profit by the women. An offer of 10 cents per “kati” of tin
sand not being considered remunerative.

The next venture was at Benkong, in the district of Batang
Padang, some twelve miles from the town of Tapah. In 1895
Mr. A. H. A. Woodgate, of the firm of Messrs. W. F’. Higginson
& Co., put up there hate a mile of six-inch pipes, with a Sneniere
of the same pattern and size as that used at Gopeng. The head
of water was two hundred feet, and the nozzles used varied from
one to three inches in diameter, according to the amount of
water available. The line of sluice boxes was thirty inches wide
by four hundred feet in length; below which there was a tail-
race one thousand feet long. The full water supply being inter-
mittant the sluice did not work well, and was discarded in
favour of a ditch of about a thousand feet in length, which had
previously been used by the Malays for their ground sluicing.

The upper portions of the ditch are planked and graded
in sections, with perpendicular drops or falls of fifteen feet
between each section. Of these the upper sections are cleaned
up every three days, and the lower ones once a month. The
water supply being insufficient to work the monitor with full
effect it was done away with. The six-inch pipes from the
intake, for a distance of six hundred and sixty feet, giving a
fall of two hundred feet, were retained, but they are then
reduced to four inches, at the end of which a flexible nozzle
has been used, with better effect than could have been produced
with the monitor. The land was being worked with a face
varying from twenty to forty feet in height, and being gen-
erally very friable comes down in large masses ; and the water
delivered by the four-inch pipes being insufficient to treat this
properly, a further supply is introduced through an open head-
race at a lower level.

TIN MINING IN PERAK. 85

Messrs. Aylesbury and Bamforth next put up six-inch pipes
at Bruseh, in Batang Padang, in the year 1895. A short sluice
of about a hundred and fifty feet was at first employed, but
it gave the most unsatisfactory results. In the year 1896 experi-
ments were begun with the view of improving the working of the
sluices, and by July the form which will now be described had
been evolved.

The water is brought from a stream called the Sungei Gepai
by means of a long ditch cut out on the face of the hill, with
wooden flumes to carry it across the ravines and over those
places where the hillside is too steep to allow of a ditch being
dug. There are four miles of open ditching, and over three
thousand feet of flumes. Both ditch and fluming are variously
graded, depending on the nature of the soil passed over, and
capable of supplying water sufficient to keep three monitors
at work using six-inch piping with a fall of two hundred and
fifty feet At the end of the ditch is the intake box. This
is simply a wooden tank, fitted with a grating to catch and
prevent leaves, sticks and other things from entering the pipes
with the water. There are water gates between the intake
box and the ditch, and also an Oucriom to allow the surplus
water to escape without doing damage to the plant. The pipes
enter the lower part of the intake box, and are then simply laid
on the surface of the hillside down to the monitor. The pipes
are of riveted steel plates, slightly larger at one end than the
other so as to allow of the smaller end of one fitting into the
larger end of the next. They are eight hundred feet in length,
and the head of water is two hundred and thirty feet, that
is to say the vertical height from the working face to the intake
box is that distance. There are valves at the intake box, and
also near the monitor, so as to be able to control the supply
of water or to shut it off entirely. The monitor is of the usual
type, with nothing particular about it. It is a stout conical
steel tube mounted at its larger end on an universal joint, so
that the operator can turn it about with ease in any direction.
At the narrow end there is a screw into which different sized
nozzles can be fixed, and within the conical tube there are four
straight flat ribs of iron projecting from the sides towards
the centre. These are to give the water a straight course within
the delivery tube of the monitor, so that as it issues from the
nozzle it will maintain a rectilinear direction. Without these
ribs the water would have a tendency to move in curved lines,
varying with the changing position of the monitor tube in
relation to the pipe line. These irregularities in the direction of
the water of the jet cause it to break up into spray as soon
as it leaves the nozzle and much diminish the striking power

86 TIN MINING IN PERAK.

of the stream of water, and also the distance to which it will
carry. The rifling, as these ribs are most inappropriately called,
is therefore a very important portion of the monitor.

The jet in use at the time of the writer’s visit to the mine
was one and a half inches in diameter, but a two-inch nozzle
could be used with the supply of water available, and after
some slight alterations had been made in the sluice it was
possible to use the two-inch jet. This gives two and a quarter
times as much water as the one and a half inch jet, and con-
sequently will deal with that amount more of wash- dirt.

In working, the jet is directed against the bank of earth,
which rapidly breaks down under the impact of the stream,
and is carried by it into a ditch leading from the working face
to the head of the sluice boxes. The length of this ditch varies
from day to day as the work proceeds. From it the water and
dirt flow into a narrow sluice box set at a steep grade. The first
series of boxes is fifty feet in length by ten inches wide by ten
inches deep, and the grade is about one in six. Next in order
come fifty feet of boxes, twenty inches wide by ten inches deep,
set at one in ten; then a hundred feet of boxes, thirty inches
wide with a grade of one in twenty. Inside some of these are
zigzag rifles, the office of which is to throw the water and gravel
violently from side to side in the boxes and disintegrate the
clayey portions of it. At the end of this line of boxes comes
a drop of five feet; that is the water falls sheer down from
one box into another placed five feet below it. The object
of this is to further break up the earth and liberate the tin.
Beneath the drop and extending at right angles to it are twenty-
five feet of thirty-inch wide boxes, and at the end of them a
‘“orizzley” (that is a slanting grate of iron bars so arranged as
to throw out the stones) and a second drop of six feet. At
the bottom of this the sluice is widened out to forty inches,
and the grade lessened to one in twenty-four. These latter,
termed wash boxes, are fifty feet in length, and their object is
to catch the tin-sand, as will be explained further on. At
the end of these five boxes the sluice narrows again to thirty
inches, and the grade increases to one in eighteen. There are
eighty feet of these boxes, and they are furnished with trans-
verse riffle bars of three by two and a half inch wood, fixed
at intervals of twelve inches apart. Sixty feet of similar boxes,
also furnished with riffle bars, follow these on a grade of one
in twenty-four. Lastly come fifty feet of fifty-imch wide wash-
boxes, at a grade of one in twenty-four. These, like the wide
ones higher up the sluice, are employed to save the tin-sand.

Following the sluice boxes is a tail-race of half a mile

TIN MINING IN PERAK. 87

in length, leading into the Bidor river. It is about two feet
wide, and has staked sides and an earthen bottom. The water
not employed in the jet, and that used for washing purposes,
is led by a ditch under the end of the sluice boxes into the
top of the tail-race, so as to keep it clear of silt.

There are several bends in the course of the line of sluice
boxes, and many small drops of six to ten inches, besides the two
large ones already mentioned. The boxes are mostly ten feet
long, constructed of two-inch meranti planks. The total length,
exclusive of the face ditch, is four hundred and sixty-five feet.

The method of working is as follows. The jet of water
breaks down the bank of tin bearing earth, and washes it down
into the face ditch, from thence it enters the sluice boxes. Two
men are employed in the face ditch to help along the heavier
portions of the gravel with “ changkols.”” Once in the sluice it goes
by itself till it comes to the “grizzley,”’ where a little attention
is required to clear the bars from time to time of wood, roots,
etc., which are apt to choke it up. Then in the first set of
wash boxes there are some men employed with long- handled
“changkols,” pulling the stuff upwards against the stream. In
fact they work just in the same way as in a “long tom,” or as
it is called locally a “ lanchut.”’ These boxes are furnished with
a three or four inch high stop at the lower end of each, so
that there is always a certain amount of gravel and sand in
them, and the object of stirring this up with the “ changkols” is
to allow the water to wash away the lighter portions of it and
form a concentrate rich in tin-sand. This concentrate is lifted
from the boxes three times a day, that is every eight hours,
for which purpose clean water is sent through the sluice for
a short time previously to clear it of mud. The concentrate
is then put, a little at a time, into an ordinary “ lanchut”’ or
“long tom,” and washed until it is clean enough to be sent to
the store as tin-sand.

In the riffle boxes there are one or two men with iron rakes
to prevent stones from clogging them up. When they are in
proper working order the water goes in regular waves over
each, and down into the cavity formed between them, where a
good deal of tin is caught. These boxes are cleaned out every
ten or twelve days, according to circumstances, and the con-
centrate washed in the same way as that from the wash boxes.

At the lower wash boxes the same procedure is followed
as in the first set. The tin-sand caught here is mostly fine-
grained, as might be expected. Any tin which escapes the rifles
and wash boxes settles in the tail-race, and this will be cleaned

88 TIN MINING IN PERAK.

up from time to time as occasion offers; that is when the
monitor has to be stopped from want of water or other causes,
or when repairs to the sluice boxes are being carried out.

Shortly after the writer’s visit to the mine the wash boxes
were duplicated, and it was then possible to use the two-inch
nozzle without the tin-ore being carried down the sluice by the
increased volume of water. The men employed on this sluice
are twenty-four in number, working in shifts of eight men.
The shifts are four hour ones, so that each man does two shifts
a day. Here the men seem to prefer short shifts to the eight
hour ones customary amongst English miners. The yield of
tin-sand from the one sluice was, at the time of the writer’s
visit, about five tubs a day of twenty-four hours.

Half a mile away, on the same concession, a second monitor
was erected, the water supply for which is derived from the same
source as the other and comes down, firstly, in six hundred feet
of six-inch pipes, and then through eight hundred feet of four-
inch ones. These latter are welded and are fastened together
with clamp joints. The pipe line is therefore one thousand four
hundred feet in length, the fall from the intake to the monitor
being about two hundred and fifty feet. Over four hundred feet
of sluice, riffle and wash boxes follow the face ditch and the final
wash boxes are twelve feet wide, employing three men to catch
the tin-ore. With this exception the sluce and the method of
working it are the same as that above described. The tailings
are carried through a race a quarter of a mile long into the same
large river.

After working satisfactorily for some time the tin bearing
earth became so clayey and hard that, with the pressure avail-
able, the jet from the monitor would not break down a sufficient
quantity in the day to pay expenses. This was very unfortunate
for the owners, who had spent so much time and money in per-
fecting the working of the sluices. However, the problem of the
adaptation of the gold sluice to the exigencies of tin mining has
been solved by them, and it now only remains for someone to
apply it in the mining of some suitable land to establish hydrau-
lie sluicing on a permanent basis in the Native States.

The conditions necessary are, firstly, good tin bearing earth
of not too hard, clayey or stoney a character. Secondly, a
supply of water with a head of from two hundred to five
hundred feet. Thirdly, a sufficient fall beneath the land to
be worked to allow of the building of the sluices and, fourthly,
an outlet for the tailings, where they will either be swept away
by a large river or fill in worked out land.

FICUS ELASTICA.

(Extract From Mr. A. B. SrepHen’s Report Or His

Tour THroveH Some Or THe Inpian Forssts.)

The India-rubber plant was first planted by the Indian
Forest Department in Assam as far back as 1872. Many ways
of planting it were tried: first of all with cuttings, and some
of them did very well, but as a whole they were not a success,
Cuttings were merely put in on the level ground, and in time
they sent out roots and leaves and became good sized trees.
Someone then said that ‘ nature’s way” was the proper method
to adopt, so young seedlings were planted amongst the branches
of the jungle trees, at their forks, a large number of these died;
and afterwards they were planted in baskets, and the baskets
and all put up in the trees with the soil, many of these may still
be seen up the trees and, although they are twenty years old,
many are scarcely any bigger than the day they were planted.
They were usually placed twenty or thirty feet high, and in some
cases seventy to eighty feet high; the consequence has been that
their roots have fanled to Peal airs ground, and so they merely
just exist, and do not thrive. In a few instances the roots
managed to reach the ground, and in these cases they flourished
and became large trees. After some years somebody suggested
seed planting, and that system has now been adopted, and is
considered a great success. Seed beds should be made east by
west for shade purposes, not over four feet wide. Raised beds,
at least a foot high, with stone or brick sides to prevent wash
during rains, and when they are watered. The soil must be well
pulverised and sifted, and fine charcoal powdered up together
with wood ashes mixed with it, and then the seed should be
planted on this, and about three-quarters of an inch of the mixed
soil and ashes laid over the seed. In Assam the seed ripens in
December, and it is planted then and takes some three or four
months to germinate, but I am of opinion that perhaps if
planted say in the middle of February it would germinate at the
same time, but I may be quite wrong. After the seedlings are
about three inches high they are picked out into new nurseries,
each plant being put in at about one foot apart; here they are
allowed to grow up till they are three or four feet high. It is
then decided in which parts of the forest these are to be planted,
and in the forests fresh nurseries are made, these are stockaded

90 FICUS ELASTICA.

with very strong wooden and bamboo fences to keep out ele-
phants and deer, both animals being very numerous, and both
fond of the rubber plant. In these nurseries the plants are
placed three feet apart, and here they are allowed to remain
until they are from fourteen to twenty feet high, which is
usually when they are three years old. They generally grow up
with merely one whip-shaped stem. This latter process might
with advantage be done away with in this country, except where
there are elephants.

The system now adopted is to cut lines, twenty feet wide
and seventy feet apart, through the jungle, clearing everything.
Even very tall trees adjoining these lines should be felled, to
prevent drip from their leaves, and too much shade. Up these
lines, at every thirty-five feet, mounds, six feet high with a base
diameter of about ten feet, are raised, a rubber plant is planted
on top of each of these, care being taken to keep the top of the
mounds more or less flat to allow rain water to sink into them.
The plants are very hardy, and are generally planted with bare
roots, but only in the wet season will they come on; if planted
during the drought they usually die. If planted in the rains a
tree seldom dies unless pulled out by elephants, and if there is
good rainy weather the leaves seldom wither on the plants when
transplanted. The reason that planting on mounds is con-
dered so good is because the plant usually sends out its roots
just above the earth, and these run down over these mounds
to get their nourishment, but great care should be taken to
send men every month or two to cover up these roots with
earth; every time this is done the plant seems to go ahead,
and sends out more roots and shoots. This should be done
until the plant is about six years of age, when it may be left to
take care of itself. The plant has no tap root, all roots being
surface feeders. This system seems to be a very great success,
and the trees of twelve years of age are fully as large as those
that were planted twenty years ago on the old system. I saw
several of the stockaded nurseries, but these we could avoid,
and put our plants out when they were two years old, and by
so doing I believe the trees would more quickly throw out
their branches, and grow into better shaped trees earlier.

I saw quantities of rubber of allages, from the nursery stage
up to those of over twenty-two years of age. Very little jungle
clearing is necessary as the plant grows very quickly, so it is
merely necessary to keep the lines more or less clear: cross - lines
every few hundred yards or so very greatly facilitate the superin-
tending of work of this kind. The roots of the rubber run all
over the surface of the ground, and twist themselves up together,

FICUS ELASTICA. 91

and even grow into one another, so that by tapping a root you
may be in reality tapping several. After about twelve years a
eood deal of the intervening jungle begins to get killed out, and
after twenty years it is difficult to find any but: rubber trees, and
a few shrubs and grasses erowing underneath. So in this wi Ly
a rubber plantation when once well started practically clears its
own jungle. It is considered inadvisable to plant closer than
the distance given above, as it is believed if a tree were killed its
companions might also die. I saw some instances where the
Forest Department had tried to kill out every other tree where
they were planted too close, and although they had been dread-
fully tapped for three years in succession they looked quite as
healthy as the intervening ones, which had not been tapped at
all. J saw, in some of the eight year old plantations, that the
branches up the lines had met, and the canopy up the lines was
quite complete. At twelve years the canopy the other way was
complete, therefore completely covering the ground.

The way the India-rubber tree is killed by the natives is
that they dig small holes under the large main roots of the trees,
and then cut them quite or almost through, and let them prac-
tically bleed to death. In this way they. get a great quantity
of rubber at the expense of the tree dying.

I think that planters who have spare jungle could not do
much better than follow the lead of the Indian Forest Depart-
ment. The expense would be very small indeed, probably jungle
felling would only cost 53 per acre, and the seventeen ‘Mounds
per acre not over $2. Then there would be the nurseries, and a
few coolies occasionally just to keep the lines open and throw a
little earth on the roots of the young plants for about six years,
when they could take care of themselves.

It is found that at twelve years a tree will yield annually 1
pound of rubber; at fifteen, 2 pounds; at twenty, 3 pounds, and
it is believed that at one hundred years they yield 20 pounds per
annum. At this rate the first tapping would probably pay all
previous expenses. I believe that after I left the plantation
some experiments were made to see what the trees actually
yielded. I am writing to Mr. Copeland, who is in charge of the
ea: for information. The Government have planted

2,200 acres, and are putting out more as quickly as possible.

Coole labour in Assam is very dear, the Forest Department
pay 32 cents per diem, and have diffic ulty in getting men even at
that rate. The planters have to bring their labour from Central
India, and pay a very large sum for it. Second class coolies

2
2

92 FICUS ELASTICA.

which arrived at Namgoan estate when I was there, cost
Rs. 142 each individual. First class coolies (which are almost
impossible to get) cost Rs. 20 more.

T can obtain India-rubber seed, Ficus Elastica, for persons
wishing to try what they can do in this way in this State, if the
Government wish me to do so, but it is too late now, and we
could not get any before the end of the year.

RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK.

By L. Wray, JUN.

Seeds of Para Rubber were first obtained some twenty-four
years ago, and the introduction is thus described in the Eeonomic
Pr oducts 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-
cutta, and it was accordingly arranged that Ceylon should be
established as the depot for supplyi ing young plants to the
parts of India where Hevea cultivation was thought possible.
On the 14th June, 1876, 70,000 seeds were received at Kew from
Mr. Wickham (who was paid for them at the rate of £10 per
1,009) ; 4 per cent germinated. Of these, 1,919 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. In the
report for the previous year he says that ‘seeds and plants of
Hevea braziliensis 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. O. 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,

94. RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK.

as by now they would be valuable, not only as rubber but as
seed producers

The tree has also been planted at Parit Buntar, where it
grows well. It is in the garden of the District Magistrate,
and close to the river. The iad is occasionally flooded by the
river, and in the ordinary way at high tide the river is only a
foot or two below the level of the auras of the ground. The
river is quite salt enough for the nipah palm to grow well on
its banks.

It has been planted at Setiawan, also on low land near the
sea; at Tapah, Batu Gajah, in Kinta, and other places in the
State, and in all it has grown well.

It may, therefore, be stated that it will thrive in any
locality, from the bakau swamps to the foot-hills, and on any
soil from rich alluvium to old mine heaps.

So far I have not noticed that it has any enemies which do
it serious injury. When large areas come to be planted up
there may arise trouble with some pest, but at present there
does not appear to be any indication of such a contingency.

Hitherto the trees have been planted singly and, as might
be expected, they have grown with short trunks and bushy tops.
To be a success, that is to yield large quantities of rubber, the
tree must be planted so that it will run up and form a tall,
straight, branchless trunk

There is little to guide one on the subject, but from fifteen
to twenty feet apart would appear to be about the correct
spacing. At twenty feet it might be necessary to plant
something in between to keep them from early branching, but
this would not be necessary at fifteen feet. In Larut, at an
estate at Kampong Dew, they are being planted at ten by ten
feet, that is 544 per acre. It is very close, but it is the
intention, I am informed by Mr. Waddell Boyd, the Manager,
to thin them out later on to twenty by twenty feet, or 108
per acre, tapping the intermediate trees, that is those ie
are ultimately to be thinned out, as early as possible and a
severely as they will stand, while the others are allowed to
erow to a large size before tapping.

With a view to giving some data respecting the growth of
the trees, I have measured some of those in the Museum
grounds. These trees, it is to be remembered, are ten years old
and are planted on mined land of the poorest quality.

RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK. 95

A. ‘Total Height 77 feet. Girth of Trunk at 3 feet, 3 feet 8 inches

B. es 89, ne as ze es ae
(G ? 98, F. , Ain te OE 083
D 69 _,, : . Siaephioy 3
E ; 742, é F Di SOL
iy ‘ fe oe * i ee mate pe
G: ; 60, ; ? Sa oe
H. . 64 ,, ; * Ch Meret aes
ie 4 The 56 3 ; 5) arsy Ae or
Jk ze 69, ¥ “f Stawell oes
K. = 67 Fe ae o- tee i eee
L 83, x F, AE a yt
M 2 67, ” 7 Be ae Td 3

.

For these thirteen trees the mean height is 74 feet, and the
mean girth, at three feet from the ground, is 4 feet 2 inches.
This gives a mean annual growth in height of 7 feet 3 inches,
in circumference of 5 inches, and in diameter of 1°6 inch.

The best grown of these trees is A, which has a trunk of 21
feet to the first branch, its diameter being, at three feet from
the ground, 14 inches; at six feet 125 inches; and at twenty-
one feet, 115 inches. This tree is in between others which
have, by shading and crowding it, induced it to grow up
straight and branchless.

The greatest difficulty in planting Para is the very short
time which the seed remains good after it falls from the trees.
The time which elapses before they are planted should not under
any circumstances be longer than a week, and if they can be
planted before this so much the better. Sown at once nearly
all germinate, but each day which intervenes increases the
number of failures, till at the expiration of ten days or so
none grow.

The trees are very prolific seed bearers. Those in the
Museum grounds have this year yielded nearly 14,000 seeds, or
to speak more correctly, that number have been collected. Most
of the trees are planted by the side of a large ditch, and all the
seeds which fall into it are at once carried away as they are very
light and float on the water. The seeds have been damned
3,000 given to the Jebong Estate and 11,000 to the Sam Sing
Estate.

At fifteen by fifteen feet 14,000 seed would be enough to
plant 724 acres of land. Where the land is ready it is certainly
an advantage to plant the seed at stake, but where this cannot

96 RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK.

be done not much loss would follow planting in nurseries and
then transplanting. The thing to avoid in this method is the
production of double stems near the ground, caused by the
original shoot dying out or being broken off.

In the first few years a little judicious pruning would
prevent this tendency to throw up more than one stem. In
other respects they do not require any pruning nor, after the
first few years, any attention at all, except a little cleaning with
a “parang.” The trees are vigorous growers and have such
thick fohage that they would soon cover the ground and
effectually keep out all weeds and scrub.

Many methods have been suggested and tried for tapping
the trees, but what may be called the herring-bone method
appears to have advantages over the others. This is the way
the Ipoh trees are tapped by the wild tribes of Perak, and it is
also used by the Malays for tapping trees yielding bird-lime,
ete. The American rubber collectors also adopt the same
method for tapping Castilloa. In 1888-9 the trees, Para and
Castilloa, at Kuala Kangsar, were tapped by herring-bone cuts
by Malays.

On the 5th July a rubber tree in the Museum grounds was
tapped by a herring-bone incision in the bark of the trunk
about a quarter of an inch wide and reaching down to the wood.
The cuts were widened several times to, ultimately, about half an
inch. By the 7th October the cuts were closed up with a new
growth of bark. Three months is therefore sufficient for the
covering over of half inch wide cuts made right down to the
wood. The last places to heal over were those where the two
side cuts met the vertical one; here, of course, the width of
exposed wood was considerably more than half an inch.

I would suggest that the lateral cuts should not meet the
vertical ones at the same point, but that they should be made
in the way shewn at A in place of B.

‘
v N

RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK. 97

The junctions in A would heal over in much less time than
in B, as they would not be nearly so wide.

The best way of carrying out the herring-bone method of
tapping is a matter of much importance, as on it depends the
cost of the collection of the rubber. Common knives, chisels,
chopping knives, pruning knives, etc., are quite unsuited to the
work, so I devised an implement for scoring the bark which
apparently answers the purpose in a satisfactory manner. The
handles are made like a boat-builder’s draw knife, but the
cutting blade is shaped lke the letter U, and fixed by a suitable
set screw or wedge in the bar joming the handles, and at right
angles to them. In cutting a herring- bone incision the knife is
taken i in both hands by the handles and a long vertical cut made
in the bark, but not so deep as to reach the sap layer. The
blade ploughs out a furrow having the same section as itself,
and of a depth corresponding to the: inchnation at which the in-
strument is held in relation to the surface of the bark; the set

of the handles giving complete control over the direction of the
blade.

The side cuts may then be made to the same depth. Hav-
ing gone so far, and having cleaned away all the loose cuttings
of outer bark. the receptical for catching the sap may be fixed at
the lower end of the vertical score ; and then beginning from the
top of the cut it may, by a second application of the tool, be
deepened to the proper extent. By following this procedure
waste of rubber may be avoided to a large extent, and a
cleaner product obtained.

The same instrument can, of course, be used to enlarge the
scores for the subsequent tappings. The scoring knife will, I
think, be found to quite halve the time taken in tapping the
trees, and do the work in a much better fashion as well.

The recepticals for catching the sap can conveniently be
made as follows:—A tin can is fitted with a sort of sharp
straight-edged lip at one side, and a hinged lid to keep out
fragments of bark, rain- water, etc., and it is best and quickest
hung on to the tree by a couple of attached wires furnished with
sharpened hook points.

In this way there is nothing required by the Collector but
his scoring knife and tins. He wants neither nails, hammers,
wet clay, knives, chisels or other things now in use.

Mr. J. C. Willis, Director of the Ceylon Royal Botanical
Gardens, is trying a method of tapping with small detached

98 RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK.

V-shaped incisions made with two cuts of a chisel having a wide
blade of about an inch in breadth. These cuts, I find, heal up
in a very short time and do little damage to the tree, but it is
doubtful if they will yield as much rubber as the native herring-
bone shaped cuts. Mr. Willis informs me his experiments are
not yet complete.

Some years back an instrument for tapping was recom-
mended, of the following description. A piece of wood, about
an inch broad and a foot or more long, had the central portion
set with sharp steel spikes like the hair of a brush. It was to be
taken in both hands by the ends, which served as handles, and
the spikes pressed into the bark, producing a series of punc-
tures through to the wood. On trial, in Perak, on the Kuala
Kangsar trees, 1t was found that although the sap flowed when
it was appled in fair quantities it stopped almost at once, as the
holes quickly became sealed up by the coagulation of the sap
within them.

In Dr. G. Watt’s Dictionary of the Economie Products of
India the collection of the rubber is thus described :—

“Mr. Cross gives a detailed account of the method persued
in Para, of which the following are the main facts. The milk is
drained into small earthen vessels attached to the trees by an
adhesive clay. The contents of fifteen of these cups make one
English imperial pint. Arriving ata tree, the collector takes the
axe in his right hand, and, striking in an upward direction as
high as he can reach, makes a deep upward sloping cut across
the trunk, which always goes through the bark and penetrates
an inch or more into the wood. The cut is an inch in breadth.
Frequently a small portion of the bark breaks off from the
upper side, and occasionally a thin splinter of wood is also raised.
Quickly stooping down he takes a cup, and pasting on a small
quantity of a clay on the flat side, presses it to the trunk close
beneath the cut. By this time the milk, which is of a dazzling
whiteness, is beginning to exude, so that if requisite he so
smooths the clay that it may trickle direct into the cup. Ata
distance of four or five inches, but at the same height, another
1s luted on, and so the process is continued until a row of cups
encircles the tree at a height of about six feet from the ground.
Tree after tree is treated in like manner, until the tapping
required for the day is finished. This work should be concluded
by nine or ten o’clock in the morning, because the milk con-
tinues to exude slowly from the cuts for three hours or perhaps
longer, . . . . the quantity of milk that flows from each
cut varies, but if it is large and has not been much tapped the

RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK. 99

majority of the cups will be more than half full, or occasionally
a few may be filled to the brim. But if the tree is much gnarled
from tapping, whether it grows in the rich sludge of the “ gapo”
or dry land, many of the cups will be found to contain only about
a tablespoonfull of milk and, sometimes, hardly that. On the
following morning the operation is performed in the same way,
only that the cuts or gashes beneath which the cups are placed
are made from six to eight ches lower down the trunks than
those of the previous day. Thus each day brings the cups
gradually lower until the eround i is reached. The collector then

begins as high as he can “reach, and descends as before, taking
care, owenes to make his cuts im separate places from those
previously made. If the yield of milk from a tree is great, two
rows of cups are put on at once, the one as high as can be
reached and the other at the surface of the eround, and in the
course of working the upper row descending daily six or eight
inches, while the lower one ascends the same distance, both rows

in a few days come together. When the produce of milk
diminishes in long wrought trees, two or three cups are put on
various parts of the trunk, where the bark is thickest. Al-
though many of the trees of this class are large, the quantity of
milk obtained is surprisingly little. This state of things is not
the result of over- pee. as some have suggested

The best milk yielding tree I examined had the marks of twelve

rows of cups which had been put on this season. The rows were
only six inches apart, and in each row there were six cups, so
that the total number of cups which had been made within the
space of three months amounted to seventy-two.”

In the Kew Bulletin of 1893, page 159, the following note
occurs in relation to the yield of rubber :—

“Dr. Trimen to Royal Gardens, Kew. India rubber (21 Ibs.) from
Hevea braziliensis (Para) grown in Henerateoda Botanic Gardens, Ceylon,
in 1892.

“ The tree from which this was obtained is now fifteen years old, anid
the stem has a circumference of 6 feet 5 inches at a yard above tlhe
ground. It has now been tapped three times, and has given the
following yield :—

In 1888 it gave 1 lb. 11? ozs. 11 years old.
0) LOGO a 2a Lom aye lS $5
pe SO Zee ee 2h lice cr.s, Alo 5

“ Making a total of 7 pounds 24 ounces of dry rubber in five years.

“The tree is in no respect the worse for this treatment; the rest in
alternate years permitting the scars on the trunk to become completely
healed,

(Signed) HENRY TRIMEN.”

100 RUBBER GROWING IN PERAK.

a Hecht, Levis & Khan report the rubber to be worth
2s. 3d. to 2s. 6d. per pound.

It has recently been proved by Messrs. Curtis, Derry and
others, that these trees will yield at least one pound per tree per
year of clean rubber. Taking the value of the rubber at 2s. per
pound only we get, for an acre of land, planted twenty b
twenty feet, an annual crop worth £10 16s., and if planted at
fifteen by fifteen feet, worth £19 6s. This should begin, as far
as is known, at about the sixth or seventh year, and by the
twelfth year should have increased to double the amount given.

The history of the Ceara Rubber (Manihot glaziovi) in
Perak is not encouraging. ‘The trees were first planted in Perak
in 1877, at Kuala Kangsar, and in 1880-1 at Lady Weld’s
Rest-house. They grew “well for a few years, but on attaining a
trunk diameter of about four to five inches all died off. Some
were also planted in Taipmg and other places with similar
results.

A single tree of Castilloa Rubber was planted by Sir Hugh
Low at Kuala Kangsar, on a low hill by the side of the Resi-
dency; it does not seem to thrive, but this may be due to the
unsuitability of the situation.

I hope to be able to give further information on the subject
when some experiments which are in progress are completed.

REPORT ON THE TAPPING OF THE PARA
RUBBER TREES AT KUALA KANGSAR.

By R. Derry.

Some months ago the Director of Kew wrote to me that he
had heard from Sir Hugh Low that the Kuala Kangsar tree did
not exude when tapped, and asked, with a view to information,
for the reason.

It will be seen from this report that the work for the year is
not yet completed, and I would particularly point out that the
experiments have not been conducted to test how much each tree
would yield, for the reason that these trees are of much greater
value to the Government at the present time as seed bearers
than rubber producers; as an instance of this I would mention
that applications for 70,000 seeds have been received for the
current year (of which 25,000 have been supplied) and an
application filed for 100,000 seeds next year.

The Para rubber trees (Hevea braziliensis) at Kuala
Kangsar were first tapped during the month of August, and
the work has been proceeding up to the present time. The
frequent wet days have delayed the work considerably. At
the end of October 60 trees had been tapped and 88 pounds
of dry marketable rubber prepared. Must of the trees tapped
were six years old, and from these trees an average of 10 ounces
of dry rubber has been obtained. A few trees, twelve years old,
produced 3 pounds each, but in no imstance were the tappings
exhaustive. Two samples have been sent to Mincing Lane for
opinion and valuation.

DAP EUNG:

The trees were tapped with almost V-shaped cuts, a few
inches apart, with a channel down the centre from the lower
branches to the base. An ordinary pruning knife was used to
make the first cuts, and about a quarter of an inch of the outer
bark removed, care being taken not to cut too deeply. So soon
as this commenced to callus, which varies from two to several
days, the edges of the cuts were lightly shaved with a very sharp
chisel every “day, with an occasional interval, until the decided
quantity had been exuded. The rubber was collected in locally

102 TAPPING PARA RUBBER TREES.

made tin boxes, 6 inches by 4 inches by 2 inches, nailed at the
base of the tree, with the lid partially opened so as to prevent
wet or dirt from fallmg in. When full this was allowed to dry,
and the water pressed out (a pinch of salt appears to expedite
the coagulation), and then kept in smoke for about a week to
prevent mildew.

TIME OF TAPPING.

Para rubber has a short resting season, when most of the
leaves fall off. The flowers usually appear first, and when the
tree is in full foliage tapping can be commenced and carried on
with different trees until again deciduous. The first cuts can
be made at any time of the day, and may be left for weeks in
the event of ‘exceptionally wet weather, but the subsequent
tappings should always be done in the evening as the rubber
soon ceases to exude with the influence of the | sun.

PLANTING.

Most of the trees at Kuala Kangsar are planted on wet
land, subject to be flooded every year. Some, however, are on
high dry land, but my experiments are not sufficiently complete
to say if there is any difference in the yield of rubber on dry
against wet land.

The tree appears to be the most adaptable of any rubber
tree, growing from swampy lands to an elevation of several
hundred feet, and seems to thrive on any ordinary soil. The
material point in its cultivation is close planting. I recommend
not more than fifteen feet apart.

REMARKS.

IT am of opinion that a tree five or six years old is capable of
producing 1; pounds, and a tree thirteen years old, 5 pounds of
rubber without injury. The cost of tapping, cei and pre-
paring I should estimate, working on a large scale, about 30
cents per pound. The present mondan Salkite for dry rubber is
from 3s. 6d. to 3s. 8d. (sterling) per pound.

I would add that I shall be able to offer some further
remarks when my experiments are completed, and when I receive
an opinion on the samples sent home.

CORRESPONDENCE RELATING TO THE INTRO-
DUCTION OF RAMIE CULTIVATION INTO PERAK.

(British Resident, to Curator of the Perak Museum.)

British Resrpency, PERAK,

28th November, 1896.
Dear WRay,

You have probably seen a copy of this,* and have of course kept
yourself abreast of the latest that has been written about rhea and ramie.
Can you favour the Government with an official memorandum on the
subject? What kind we have here, whether indigenous, its value, what
used for locally, prospects of native cultivation and exportation of dried
ribbons, prospects of European planters and preparation on the spot, soil,
suitable seasons, methods, and the points which you may think it will be
for the good of the State to make public in English orin Malay . . . .
In the Secretary to Government’s Office there is a copy of an Indian Agri-
cultural Ledger on the subject, which I will have sent to you, but I do not
think it is much up to date.

Yours sincerely,

L. WRay, JUN., (Signed) W. H. TREACHER.
PERAK MUSEUM.

(Curator, Perak Museum, to British Resident.)
TAIPING, PERAK,

20th December, 1896.
DeaR Mr. TREACHER,

I have hunted up all the information I can on the subject of ramie,
and have come to the conclusion that planting it in Perak would not pay.
T enclose a part of my notes for you to read, and should like to know what
you think had better be done in the matter. It is taking a great responsi-
bility to recommend planters to cultivate a product which, according to the
information now available, is not likely to cover expenses. On the other
hand the information may be incorrect, and therefore it is inadvisable to
prevent anyone from trying experiments in the cultivation.

Yours truly,
W. H. TREAcHER, EsqQ., C.M.G., (Signed) L. Wray, JUN.

THE RestpEency, TAIPING.

* The book was ‘ Rhea, its Cultivation, Decortication and Baling, and the subse-
quent Treatment of the Ribbons by the *‘ Gomess’ process,’ compiled under the
direction of the Rhea Fibre Treatment Company, Limited, by B. Ribbentrop,
Inspector-General of Forests, India. ‘This book advocates the production of ribbon
by planters for sale to the Gomess Company. The cost of cultivation is estimated
£4 and the selling price in the Hast at £7 per ton of ribbon,

104. RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

REPORT ON THE PROSPECTS OF RAMIE CULTIVATION
IN PERAK.

The possibility of the successful cultivation of ramie
depends on (a) Suitability of climate and soil, (b) Cost of
production, and (c) Price obtainable for the product.

In regard to the first condition, there appears to be no
question that the climate is eminently suited to ramie, and that
there is an abundance of land fit for its growth.

The cost of production therefore resolves itself into a ques-
tion of the cost of the labour necessary to produce a given
quantity of the fibre.

Mr. J. Forbes Royle, in The Fibrous Plants of India, gives

the yield at about 12 maunds of fibre per acre. This would
equal, at 80 pounds per maund, 960 pounds.

Mr. J. Montgomery, in a report to the Indian Government,
gives the yield per acre as 972 pounds, but with proper culti-
vation, he says, 1,G0C may be obtained.

Mr. Hardy is stated to have said, in Rhea, its Cultivation,
ete., that a yield of 1,400 to 2,800 of ribbon per year per acre
may be obtained; this would give, of fibre, about 840 to 1,680
pounds.

“E.M.,” in the British North Borneo Herald puts the yield
at from 500 to 1,120 pounds to the acre per annum.

Mr. E. Mathieu, in the Straits Times, gives the production,
under good cultivation, at 30,000 pounds of stems, yielding
6 per cent of fibre; this equals ‘84 of a ton, or 1,881 pounds.

I will now put the above information into a tabular form,
so that it may be easier to draw deductions from it :—
Fibre. Ribbon.
lbs. Ibs.
Forbes Boyle ay san, 900 ie we 1,280
J. Montgomery (mean) ... 986 ae sce dood

Hardy do. i 14260 ae sua 2,100
E.M. do. ca OL) ate .. 1,080
E. Mathieu do. .. 1,881 at .. 2,008

Mean yield per acre 1,173 i sin0 e000.

ee eared

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 105

The mean yield of fibre is therefore a few pounds over half
a ton, and of ribbon ‘739 of a ton per acre; that is about
142 hundredweights, or 125 pilkuls.

Very little is to be found in any of the accounts of ramie
of the cost of the cultivation. It is variously stated that one
coolie can keep in order two to three acres of land. While no
information is available as to the cost of gathering, boiling,
stripping, drying and baling the ribbon.

Taking the mean, that is one coolie to 23 acres of land, or
two coolies to 5 acres, and the wages at $9 per month, the cost
per annum is $43.20 per acre, and per ton of ungathered ribbon
$58.45.

As I have already said there is nothing on which to base an
estimate of the cost of the harvesting and preparing the crop.
The process is as follows :—

The stalks are cut near the ground, then stripped of leaves
and topped, they are then carried to the boiling tanks and boiled
for about a quarter of an hour; the bark is then stripped off by
hand, carried to the works to dry, when quite dry it is sorted
into lengths, and baled ready for shipment.

Considering that some 15 tons of stalks have to be treated
per ton of ribbon, I do not think that less than $20 could be
allowed Lee ton of ribbon. This would bring up the cost of the
ribbon to $78.45 per ton, or $57.98 per acre.

There is then supervision, manure, rent, duty, and buildings.
The least that can be allowed for this is $10 per acre per year.
Taking a 500 acre estate this would be made up as follows :—

Rent, at 50 cents per acre... . 200
Supervision, at $300 per month .. 3,600
Mauure ... a A .. 900
Upkeep of Buildings sie : es, 200

Duty on 369°5 tons at 25 per ant oe 623

5,223

The final cost of the ribbon would be $91.97 per ton, or
$67.98 per acre.

The next part of the subject is (c) the selling price of the
ribbon. In the handbook of the Rhea Treatment Company it is

106 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

stated “The owners of the ‘Gomess’ process, who are repre-
sented in England by the Foreign and Colonial Rhea Fibre
Treatment Syndicate, Limited, 17, Shaftesbury Avenue, London,
W., and in this country (India) by the Indian Rhea Fibre
Parent Company, Limited, Bombay, are prepared to contract
for the purchase of large quantities of dried ribbons of bark ;
and in regard to this the London Syndicate report :—

(a). “That they require the raw material in the shape of
ribbons, that is the whole bark hand stripped from the stems,
thoroughly dried and packed in bales.

(b). “That they prefer the species Boehmeria nivea, but
that they can also use the Boehmeria tenacissima and Ban-
rhea.

(c). “That the quantities required by the London Syndicate
would be continuous, and very large; that it would be difficult
to give exact figures, but that they “could do with 10,000 tons to
commence with.

(d). “That they are at present prepared to contract, at
prices equivalent to from £10 to £11 per ton delivered in
London, or £7 a ton at port of shipment in India.”

These prices are equal in dollars, at an exchange of 2s. 1d.,
to $96 to $105.60 per ton in London, and $67.20 per ton, or $4
per pikul, at port of shipment in India or, presumably, in the
Straits.

Dr. D. Morris, the Assistant Director of the Royal Gardens,
Kew, in a lecture delivered on the 30th November, 1896, gives
the price of ribbon as £8 per ton in London.

It does not appear that more than £7 ($67.20) per ton
could be reckoned on for the ribbon, and as by the above esti-
mate it would cost to grow and prepare $91.97 per ton, it would
appear that there is a ‘loss of $24.77 per ton, or $18.30 for each
acre of cultivation.

Dr. Morris, in the Kew Bulletin, says-—‘“It is important
therefore for ramie planters to aim at the production of ribbons
at a cost not exceeding about £4 to £5 at the port of shipment.
Important elements in suck production would be to plant ramie
only in places where the soil and climate will allow of three or
four crops to be reaped per annum; where labour is very cheap
and abundant, and where good facilities exist for transport and
shipment.” It is just in the one matter of labour that Perak
does not come up to the requirements of the case. Labour
here is very dear and scarce. If it was to be had for $4.50

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 107

per month there is no reason why ramie culture should not be
successful.

There is another side to this question, and that is for the
planter to also be the manufacturer of the finished product, in
the same way as sugar planters are; but there is at present
absolutely no information published from which any estimate
could be made as to the cost of manufacture. Every detail
would have to be worked out by the planter himself: firstly, in
regard to processes and, secondly, as to the machinery which
would turn out the fibre in the form most easily saleable to the
spinners at home.

(Signed) L. Wray, Jun.
5th January, 1897.

(The British Resident, to the Resident- General.)

RESIDENT - GENERAL,—
You may like to see this. Please return it to me.

2. It is disappointing. I had hoped that ramie cultivation might
prove a success here, but according to Mr. Wray’s estimate there would be
a loss of $18.30 per acre at present prices.

(Signed) W. H. TREACHER.
6th Janwary, 1897.

In the mean time Mr. E. Mathieu addressed the following
letter to the Resident - General :—

S1etap Estate, SINGAPORE,

15th December, 1896.
To F. A. SweTtTtENHAM, EsQ.,

RESIDENT-GENERAL OF THE PROTECTED STATES,
Sir, Kvuata LUMPUR.

I have the honour to beg your acceptance of the accompanying
brochure on Facts about Ramie, a re-issue of contributions by Mr. Ridley
and myself to the Straits Times.

A letter of Messrs. Dunlop Bros. & Co., 49, Fenchurch Street,
London, to the Government of Jamaica says, under date June 15th,
1896 —“ Since we last wrote to you the demand for ramie has consid-
erably increased. Not so much in a speculative manner as in a steady,
firm demand brought about by manufacturers in a large way of business
who require constant supplies of the article to meet certain demands
which have arisen for a class of material that could really only be made
from rhea fibre. Nor it is likely that this demand will only be spasmodic,
because it arises from the efforts of the English manufacturers to compete
with cheap artificial silk, which is being made and sold in this country

3

108 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

from TFrance, etc.’””’ The demand for ramie fibre having assumed such a
character of fixity and continuity it seems hardly likely that it will long
remain unanswered, and that the attention of planters will not soon be
drawn to it.

The want of an efficient decorticator to produce clean fibre (instead of
ribbons) has been hitherto a stumbling- block in the way of planters, but
from information recently received I am led to believe and, almost state
with certainty, that the ‘‘ Faure” decorticator and a still more recently
invented machine, the ‘“‘ Estienne” machine, of which I have received full
particulars and drawings, entirely remove the difficulty. The latter, which
has only just undergone a public trial in Paris with signal success, is not
yet on sale.

I believe that a great opening lays before Malaya as a ramie producer,
and if, in your enlightened sympathy with this object, your Excellency
sees a way to promote its development, I shall be glad to assist in any
way I can.

I have already written to the makers of these new machines asking
them to send each one machine for a public trial, but it is a far cry from
here to Paris and, given the little the people know or care about Malaya,
it is not easy to induce them to such a step; may be the action of Goyern-
ment would have much effect in such a matter.

I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Yours faithfully,

(Signed) KE. Marutev,
Manager of Siglap Estate, Singapore.

(Resident - General, to British Resident, Perak.)

Why not send a copy of Mr. Wray’s report to Mr. Mathieu, and ask
him whether he agrees with it ?

23rd January, 1897. (Signed) F. A. SWETTENHAM.

CURATOR AND STATE GEOLOGIST,

Will you please see this. I am travelling and cannot well get a copy
of your report. Would you be good enough to send a copy yourself to
Mr. Mathieu. A clerk im the Secretary to Government’s Office would
copy your report if you have not a spare copy.

2. In view of your report I do not see my way to recommend any
action by Government, except perhaps in the way of granting land on
special conditions.

Ipon, 27th January, 1897. (Signed) W. H. TREACHER,

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 109

SieLtaPp Estate, SINGAPORE,

15th March, 1897.
L. Wray, Jun., Esq., PERAK.

DEAR SIR,

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 10th instant
enclosing a report on the prospects of ramie cultivation in Perak, which I
have read with great interest, and as you invite observations on the
subject, I now venture to state my views.

This country being the native habitat of ramie (Boehmeria tenacissima)
the question of suitability of climate and soil may be considered as
answered.

You, therefore, rightly say that the question resolves itself between
cost of production and value of the staple in London.

To narrow the question still further, let us classify exactly the staple
which we have to deal with, for, in ramie, confusion of terms leads to
endless misapprehension. Ramie, up to the present, has reached Hurope
in two forms,—first, ribbons, second, China-grass, the hand scraped
Chinese staple. Ribbons are the fibrous bark, free of the inner wood,
but with the gum and the outside pellicle on. They may be produced
either by hand stripping or by machines which split the stems open
and eject the inner wood, these machines should be called delignators,
not decorticators, for they leave the cortex untouched. According to the
quality of the work of the machine these ribbons give from 35 to 40 per
cent of their weight in dry, de-gummed filasse ; the dead weight of useless
matter ranges between 60 to 65 per cent. China-grass gives from 65
to 70 per cent of its weight in dry, de-gummed filasse; the dead weight
of useless matter ranges between 380 to 385 per cent.

Kindly consider how this works out. But previously please bear in
mind that weight for oe China- grass occupies only 50 per cent of the
space that ribbons do. Taking a de- cumming kier of a given capacity it
will only contain half thie weight of ribbons to a given weight of China-
grass. Supposing then, a kier of a sufficient capacity to receive one ton
weight of China-grass, the same kier will receive only half a ton of
ribbons. If, therefore, you put in the ungumming kier one ton of China-
grass you will lose, as stated above, one half, or 750 pounds in weight ; and
the weight of dry de- gummed fibre obtained will be 1,490 pounds. If you
fill the same kier with ribbons you can only get in ‘half a ton, or 1,120
pounds of ribbons, on which you lose two thirds, or 746 pounds; the
weight of dry degummed fibre obtained being 374 pounds. Note, that
in the two cases the amount of solvent employed must be the same or, if
anything, stronger in the case of ribbons. From repeated experiments in
France and in England the cost of de-gumming one ton of China- grass
has been found to “be about $40 (£4) per ton, or, allowing one third loss
of weight, $53 per ton of the de-gummed product. What cost $40 on one
ton of China-grass will cost (owing to difference of weight for same
volume) $80 per ton on ribbons, and allowing two-thirds loss of weight,
$240 per ton of the de-gummed product.

There lies the condemnation of ribbons, and the situation is hopeless,
because between the planter and the spinner there stands, of necessity,
third party, viz., the de-gummer,

110 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

This third party is the patent holder of this or that process, either a
mechanical and chemical process combined, or simply a chemical process
such as the ‘“‘ Gomess”’ process, and as long as ramie must pass through his
hands before reaching the spinner the latter will have nothing to do with
it, because, first, the price he puts on it is preclusive and, secondly, the
fibre produced has not infrequently been irretrievably damaged when
coming out of the de-gummers’ hands, the damage shewing itself only
after the weaving into fabrics. A still greater impediment is the fact
that this position of go-between creates, in favour of the de-gummers, a
monopoly which the spinners are not likely to suffer: for, among these
various de-gumming concerns there are many, especially in France, who
have no backbone at all, they turn out and shew you some beautiful
pearly white fibres as their product; they offer to pass contracts for
thousands of tons, but, were these contracts taken seriously I have no
doubt that, in many cases, as ten years ago in Algeria, history would
repeat itself, and when the time came to take delivery of the stems , they
would find means to back out of their bargains. I do not say that some of
them are not well meaning but their main aim is the raising of money on
processes, or selling patent rights. But caveat emptor!

As a correspondent of mine, an acknowledged European authority
on the subject, puts it, in a recent letter — “Il n’existe pas, en France, de
dé-gommeurs de ramie, il n’existe que des dé-gommeurs de capitaux, qui
prétendent acheter des cultivateurs, et n achétent jamais.”

Ribbons are condemned and we have, I think, heard the last of
them; the spinners will not look at them, and the planter who “ goes in”
for ribbons must therefore put himself in the hands of the de-gummers,
and there he will never find more than £8 to £9 per ton for his product.
This, as Dr. Morris points eut, means £4 to £5 at the port of shipment ;
but that is simply an economic impossibility, and when Dr. Morris sug-
gests it I can only conclude, notwithstanding the authority of his name,
that he has not ¢ rasped the practical sides of the question, for you come
only near the truth in your report when you say —‘I do not think that
less than $20 could be allowed per ton of ribbons.” You might have
gone a good deal further, and I venture to think that if you picture to
yourself what it is to turn out one ton of ribbons according to the process
referred to you will find it an utter impossibility.

Kindly allow me to try and draw it out. The yield of dry ribbons is
on average 7} per cent of ‘the weight of green stems without leaves. To
produce one ton of dry ribbons it will therefore require about 380,000
pounds of green stems, oer taking an average of six stems (stripped of
leaves) to the pound, we shall have to deal with 180,000 stems. You have
first to strip the leaves, then to boil 180,000 stems, then take them out
boiling hot, strip them while hot (or else the gum hardens again) of
their bark. ‘The boiling,” say the patentees, “will take a quarter of
an hour,’ I give them four days to do it in, with two men, and then it
will not be done. I say nothing of the size of baths required for such an
operation, the appliances necessary, cranes, travelling baskets, etc., to
manipulate the hot stuff; in fact it is a manifest impossibility. But
that will not prevent the patentees from holding to their point, and that
in good faith, for they have done it on a dozen stems or so in a tub,

The bane of ramie is that most of these inventors are Parisian or
Cockney cultivators, and they base the whole fabric of the ramie industry
on ready made notions sprung out of their own heads without the slightest
regard for the material stubborness of a fact,

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. ital

Now, Sir, | hope I have succeeded in making this much clear, first,
the economic production of ribbons is an impossibility, second, if they
could be economically produced there is no outlet for them.

The question may now be narrowed to this. Can clean, dry, par-
tially de- gummed fibre, ready for the spinner, be produced in Malaya at
a cost not exceeding say $180 per ton delivered in London, and find a
market in London at the same price as China-grass, viz., £32 to £35 per
ton. And to this question I answer—In a suitable locality (on a river)
clean, dry, de-gummed fibre equal to China-grass can be produced in
Malaya for about $150, and put in London at a total cost of $180, or there-
abouts. in support of this statement, I beg to send you, ander separate
cover, an estimate of costs and returns of a 500 acre ramie estate.

This estimate, of which only fifty copies have been printed, has just
come to my hands from the printers. It is for private circulation only,
and I sell it at $100 a copy. You are welcome to consult it, and return
it to me when done with, unless Government feel sufticiently interested
in the matter to take it. As far as I know, no such work has ever yet
been attempted, the nearest approach to it being a Mexican document
wholly unreliable and incomplete.

You will see that the scale of wages is put down at 56 per month, but
that is with the proviso, expressly stated in the introduction, that all work
should be organised on the contract system, as in Deli. If you examine
the sums allowed for the different items of w ork, you will find (supposing
an average good soil and sufficiently pulv erulent), I think, that all my
figures are high: draining, ‘ changkoling,” ete., afford a margin which
allows the diligent coolie to increase his days earnings by one-third.
Again, in the decorticating mill (vide Faure’s prospectus) two mens’ out-
put on one machine should be from 160 to 200 pounds of dry fibre per day.
I pay them in the estimate 50 cents per hundredweight, so that if they
turn out say 180 pounds their earnings are 80 cents, or 40 cents each per
day. Second, with the estimate you will find Faure’s propectas. I am
unable to send you samples of the fibre as it comes out of the machine, as
I require them to answer enquiries from other quarters. I have received
these samples from Jamaica, from London, Lemoges and Sumatra, where
one machine was at work some time ago. A new one has just arrived by
last French mail, and I have been asked to see it at work when the time
comes. The maker is quite disposed to send me one to make a public
trial, but even if I should order it out I have no ramie to feed it with, and
there is none to be had.

Not being able to shew you the fibre as it comes out of the machine,
I must ask you to take my word for this, that it not only delignates per-
fectly (i.e., takes out the inner wood) but also decorticates (i.e., rubs off
the pellicle) and leaves nothing but the fibre in just the same state of
division as the China-grass; but you must bear in mind that China- grass
comes to Europe after soaking in hot water with ashes, which does away
with the slightly greenish colour of the fibre when wet.

We have got in the “Faure” machine a tool which actually turns
out, for half a cent per pound (labour cost) a produce equal to China- grass
of a value of £30 to £382 per ton.

The question is now can we reach the spinner with this product ?
Not yet. He does not even allow China-grass to reach him, precisely,
always, on account of the gum. We, therefore, have to ungum our fibre,
or at least partially ungum it, and here I give you an extract froma letter

112 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

recently received from Mr. Barraclough, Textile Engineer, 20 Bucklers-
bury, London.

“Many of the leading spinners and people who desire to become
spinners of ramie, are personally well known to me; some of them
intimately, and it will not be a difficult matter for me to make contracts
for large quantities as soon as you and your friends are in a position to
fulfil them. One of my friends, who ranks amongst the largest spinners
of flax and hemp in the world, has several times told me recently that he is
prepared to buy the fillasse produced by Faure’s machine in its de-gummed
state, not bleached, to the extent of thousands of tons per year, and is
ready with his signature to a contract as soon as he finds good practical
people to fulfil it. In the meantime, I venture to say that you would be
rendering a good service to the cultivators of ramie if you were to free
the grouud from fear of difficulties in relation to de-gumming, and to
let every cultivator of ramie know that he can be absolutely independent
of all de-gumming patents. The process is a very simple one, and the
question of chemicals is almost eliminated,” etc., etc. Follows an estimate
of a plant, machinery and process, to de-gum one ton a day.

Now, Sir, I think I ean conclude—

First.— We can produce China- grass by purely mechanical means at a
labour cost (which does not include cost of power employed) of half a cent
per pound.

Second.— The de-gumming, which may offer certain difficulties (much
exaggerated by patent holders) in Europe, because the gum is hard, is, to
us, dealing, as we do, with freshly cut stems, a mere bugbear, and it need
not cost 1} cents a pound to do it, but on the condition “that the steeping
takes place immediately after decortication. Boiling at simply boiling
point will be sufficient for young, juicy stems, but on the very mature
stems, when the gum is thick, boiling under pressure (about 45 pounds to
the square inch) will perhaps be necessary, and the addition of 2 to 3 per
cent of washing soda will be useful, but that is all included in the cost of
1; cents given above. By means of pressure it will be easy to obtain a
complete ungumming, and it may be to the advantage of the planter to lay
out a complete ungumming plant with autoclave kiers, for, of course, the
purer the fibre, the freer from gum, the higher its value, which would then
reach £40 to £42 per ton.

Third.— We can send our fibre straight to the spinners’ door; and the
moment this is done the demand will spring up to unforeseen figures. il
beg to state, for fear of being misunderstood, that I am not pecuniarily
interested for one cent in the “‘ Faure”’ machine, and that should I hear of
a better machine coming forward I would certainly recognise it, as my
ambition les not in selling machines but in starting ramie cultivation in
these countries, whenever I am able to do so.

And I shall now conclude, Ramie is sure of a brilliant success in
Malaya, under suitable conditions, if put in the hands of men who have
thoroughly mastered the question in all its bearings; otherwise it will
bring nothing but disaster.

I remain, Dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,
(Signed) E. Maruigu.

P.S.—1 am quite agreeable to your publishing this letter if you think
it desirable.

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. Ts

SIGLAP EstaTkK, SINGAPORE,

17th March, 1897.
DEAR SIR,

To put in bolder relief the absurdity of the process of working ramie
which I attempted to draw out in my yesterday’s letter I should have put
it under figures, and I beg to do so now, because the advocacy of such
processes has consequences which may do an immense deal of harm to the
cause of ramie. Several natives round about Singapore, allured by their
simplicity (?) have started ramie planting on a small scale up to two acres
or so, and have come to me, asking me how to dispose of their crops when
they mature. I point out to them the utter folly of the attempt, but the
harm is done. I have long ago made these objections to people at home,
but if I have had a reply, which has not often been the case, it has been a
snubbing. It is important then, to point out to natives that ramie cannot
be worked on these lines, that their time will only come when large estates
open up and set up their machines; then they may probably finda market
for their stems, and this is my object in putting the operation under
figures. One ton of ribbons, as shewn, requires 180,000 stems.

$ oc
Cutting, stripping the leaves, and bundling for cartage,
180,000 stems at 5,000 stems per day of 26 cents ... 9 00
Cartage, 15 to 18 tons of stems ons sa 7 ace OF OO
Boiling (as only a tank of the dimensions of Charing
Cross Baths could contain 180,000 stems, the boiling
must be done in lots of say 10,000 at a time, in
tanks of at least 10 tons capacity, which means 18
tanks, or 18 boilings in one tank).
Filling in one tank with water, (two men at 25 cents,
50 cents,) 18 tanks ec a aes Pe jpn) UD)
Emptying (one tank, one man, half a ge 133 se 18
tanks ate 2 25
Putting in 10,000 stems aoe man at b 25 as) 18 tanks 4 50
One Fireman, and Firewood .. os aor ~« 1 0
Taking out 10,000 stems Het, Sue men at 25 cons) 18
tanks ae one . ace 9 00
Stripping 180,000 stems, at 150 stems Ee F hou or 1,500
per day of 25 cents ae a . 80 00
Spreading to ary, and crane : YeEy deeds ae dificult
operation) .. : 9 00
Straightening the nee a Pee deny, S60 get OO)
Packing and baling one ton ... : 2 50
Freight (ribbons cannot be De ets and ie bulk angel)
per ton to London 3 ‘ 15 00
109 7
Cost of cultivation and management, rent, etc., on a little ;
less than one acre, minimum .., iC me ... 40 00
Cost of, in London, per ton of ribbons .,, 149 75

114 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

This makes no provision for building of tanks, indispensable
machinery, sheds, etc.
Iam, Dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,

L. Wray, JUN. Esq., (Signed) E. Matutev.
PERAK.

(Curator, Perak Museum, to the British Resident.)

TAIPING, PERAK,
Sir, 25th March, 1897.

T have the honour to enclose two leiters which I have received from
Mr. E. Mathieu.

2. You will see that he agrees with me that it would be unwise to
recommend natives or others to plant ramie with the idea of selling the
ribbon as advised in the book you sent me by Mr. B. Ribbentrop.

3. In regard to the other side of the question, that is the production
of the finished product by the planter, Mr. Mathieu’s estimate is based on
a lower rate of wages than rule in Perak, and even then it requires the
production of half a ton of the cleaned fibre per acre per year to cover
expenses.

4, A Mr. Bluntschli was here the other day. He is the Manager of a
ramie estate in Deli, where they have planted 10 acres of the plant, and
where they are going to try the ‘‘ Faure” machine. He, however, could not
tell me anything as to the yield per acre. He came here to look for land
for this purpose, and I gave him the rainfall returns, which for this culti-
vation are much more suitable than those of Deli. He believes it will be
successful in a suitable climate like Larut, but admits that everything has
to be worked out and proved.

5. I am of opinion that if the Government wishes to help in the
introduction of this culture the best thing to do is to plant up, in a
carefully selected spot, a small area of ramie, and collect statistics as to
yield, management of crop, etc.

I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
Tue British RESIDENT, PERAK. (Signed) L. Wray, Jun.

(Curator, Perak Museum, to Mr. E. Mathieu.)

TAIPING, PERAK,
Dear Sir, 5th April, 1897.

I have the honour to acknowledge, with thanks, the very interesting
letter you have been good enough to write on the subject of ramie. Iam
elad to see that you agree with me that the production of ribbon at £7 or
£8 per ton is an impossibility in the Straits.

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 115

The question that was put to me was whether the Government should
advise and encourage natives and others to plant ramie with the idea of
selling the ribbon to the Gomess and other Companies, who have been
offering to buy it, at £7 to £8 per ton. I wrote to the British Resident,
under date the 20th December, 1896 —“‘ It is taking a great responsibility
to recommend planters to cultivate a product which, according to the in-
formation now available, is not likely to pay expenses,’ I now see by your
letter of the 17th instant that natives have been advised in Singapore to
plant ramie, with unfortunate results.

Many thanks for your estimate which, however, I have already read.
I now return it to you. I think the labour is put at too low a figure for
Perak. A Kling expects to get at least $9 per month, and a Chinaman
from $10 to $12. You see the wages paid in the mines are very high, and
the hours only about two-thirds of those on an estate.

According to your estimate it requires practically half a ton of clean
fibre per acre per annum to cover the expenses of working the 500 acre
estate. I fancy that, as yet, we have no data to go by in this part of the
world as to the yield, and that the first thing that should be done by
anyone interested in the culture is to plant up a small area and get
accurate information as to what is the actual yield of fibre per acre
before investing or recommending others to invest, large sums in start-
ing the cultivation on an extensive scale. I have ventured to recommend
that the Government should take up this work in Perak, as it seems to be
the best way in which help can be given to those who are contemplating
going into ramie cultivation.

Tam Dear Sir,
Yours truly,
KE. Maruizu, Esq., (Signed) L. Wray, Jun.
SINGAPORE.

(Mr. E. Mathieu, to the Curator, Perak Museum.)

SieLtaAp Estare, SINGAPORE.
DEAR SiR, Tth April, 1897.

I beg to confirm my letter of the 15th ultimo and, judging by your
able report that you take a genuine interest in the question, I venture
to send you a sample of ramie fibre as it comes out of the “Faure”
machine, and as I received it by yesterday’s mail from Mr. Th, Bar-
raclough, London, It is accompanied by the following letter :—

“In reply to your letter of the 6th February, I send you a sample of
fibre in exactly the state in which it left the “ Faure” machine. I was
present several days at the running of the machine last October, on Mr.
Faure’s estate in France.

“The machine was placed alongside the plantation, worked by a small
portable engine, and the stems were brought to it. After the fibre was
extracted it was hung over poles to dry in the open air, and the sample I
send you is some of the fibre which was then extracted.

“The machine fibre is worth, to-day, in this market, £32 per ton, less
2> per cent. It ranks with the best China-grass grown in a particular
province of China, and eagerly bought up by a German manufacturer,
which may be called “ Best Best China - grass,” and which is to-day worth

116 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

per ton £35. That same manufacturer has valued my sample at £32 per
ton, so you may take this figure as quite authoritative.

“T do not advocate the extraction of the whole of the gum at the
place of growth. It is better not to overdo it and leave a few per cent, say
5 to 6 per cent of the gum in the fibre, to be removed by the manufacturer
when he puts the fibre through the softening process as a preliminary to
the combing and spinning.

“With regard to the cost of producing the fibre, that, as you are well
aware, varies according to circumstances. As aman of practical knowledge
and common sense ideas in relation to this matter, you are fully aware
that the cost of growing and decorticating ramie must, of necessity vary,
according to the place and circumstances, but calculating everything very
liberally indeed, I am of opinion that ramie can easily be produced at
£14 per ton of dry fibre exactly hke the sample enclosed, and I have no
doubt that under certain favourable circumstances the price can be
reduced to £12 per ton. JI add, for the expense of packing, shipping to
London, Agents’ commission, a round sum of £5 per ton, which is
liberal, and the figures at present before me are that a fibre costing net
here £19 per ton will easily fetch £32, less 2} per cent, in this market.

“ Referring to my to-day’s sample, whatever you do with fibre in that
state causes it to weigh less, and to fetch a higher price in this market.
Supposing you were to partially de-gum it and were to take, out the
gum —equal to 20 per cent of its weight, this would immediately raise the
price to about £39 per ton. The cost of de-gumming, say £3 per ton,
would raise the price to £42 per ton. The fibre in that condition would
fetch here from £48 to £56 per ton, depending largely on the mode of
de-gumming. You would also have an additional profit from saving of
freight.”

I remain, Dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,
(Signed) E. Matuigv.

Sietar Estarn, SINGAPORE,
L. Wray, JUN. Esq., 12th April, 1898.
Perak MUSEUM.

DEAR SiR,

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 5th instant, which
reached me just after mine dated 7th had left me.

Regarding the sample of fibre which I sent you, I had it in my mind,
but somehow forgot, to refer to a statement of Dr. Morris in his Travers
lecture on the 380th November last.

He is reported to have said —‘ Crops weighing 15 to 20 tons can be
produced per acre in a year. This quantity would yield ribbands or raw
fibre of the present value of £8, or filasse the finished fibre worth about
£14 per ton.”

It is on the words in italics I wish to draw your attention. The
words “filasse”’ or “finished” fibre would convey to any clear minded
person the idea of a fibre ready for spinning, and if such a product were
worth only £14 per ton, well, that would settle once and for all the

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 117

question of ramie. Asa matter of fact, however, the really finished fibre,
ready for spinniug is worth, unbleached, but de-gummed, about £50 per
ton. The best China- grass, worth £35, is not a finished fibre ; it contains
at least 25 per cent of gum, which has to be eliminated before it can be
termed “finished.” £14 is not even the price of jute from India.

Now, this is one instance out of hundreds of the way in which the
question of ramie is handled. From beginning to end you came across
these indefinite and irregular terms, which naturally breed confusion and
give the whole thing a character of unreality and untrustworthiness very
difficult to overcome.

There is no reason why this should be, and after a long study of
ramie, extending over some years, I have come to the conclusion that
ramie will impose itself if only words and terms are agreed to which will
fit exactly its different stages. “La science est une langue bien faite”
say the French; ramie is a case in point, our knowledge of it is confused
and uncertain because our language, in connection with it, is loose aud
inexact.

This said, allow me to revert to a passage of your letter—“I fancy
that as yet we have no data to go by in this part of the world as to the
yield, etc.”

This is true, 1 believe, of the Malay Peninsula, where no attempt
has ever yet been made to cultivate ramie, but there exist very positive
data as regards Java.

IT think it was Dr. Blume, the author of Flora Javaé, who, after
careful experiment, gave the following conclusions —

“ Planting from root cuttings four crops are obtained in Java annu-
ally; the first year the plant yields 4 stems at the first cutting ; 6 to 8 at
the second cutting ; 10 to 12 at the third ; 16 to 20 at the fourth cutting.”

“One bouw (7,096 square metres) produces 34,000 kilogrammes of
ereen stems without leaves and topped (the head bud cut off), which give
1,020 kilogrammes of dry filasse.”

Taking the bouw at 12 acres, and working out these figures we find :

14 acres = 34,000 kilos green stems, stripped of leaves = 1,020 kilos
dry filasse.

# acres = 74,900 pounds green stems, stripped of leaves = 2,246

pounds dry filasse.

1 acre = 42,800 pounds green stems, stripped of leaves = 1,280
pounds dry filasse.

Kindly observe that the figure of dry filasse, 1,280 pounds, represents
only 8 per cent of the weight of green stems stripped, so that it must be
taken as that of filasse completely decorticated, dried and partially un-
gummed, which means a fibre of enhanced value.

You will find that these figures tally pretty closely with my estimate,
and I seize this opportunity to state that the figures which I have put
down in my estimate are not haphazard figures but figures which I have
mostly obtained from direct sources.

118 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

It must be remembered that ramie cultivation is no new thing;
in Algeria ten years ago it was extensively planted, not in large estates,
it is true, but estates of suflicient sizes to afford quite reliable data, 30 to
40 acres for instance: these were worked for two and, in a few cases, three
years, and given up in disgust when the parties who had contracted
to buy the fibre backed out of their contracts. In Mexico, Cuba,
Central America, large fibre producers (Sisal hemp) estates were opened
up six years ago, and in one case 100 acres planted, but when crop
time came the machine used failed to do the work.

It is given to any one who has planted ramie, even en petit, to
discriminate between the garbled reports of interested parties and the
weli-controlled figures of such experiments as Mr. Fawcett’s in Jamaica,
or Consul Hosies’ in Tamsui (Formosa) or Dr. Blume in Java.

That no trial has been made in Malaya is a misfortune, but there
is prima facie evidence that, given suitable conditions, these recorded
figures will be fully maintained and, probably, exceeded,

I did doubt, in the part, the ability of ramie to pay its way, and
these doubts were only cleared when the new model of Faure’s
machine appeared, but I never doubted the capacity of ramie to
yield in Malaya paying crops if the fibre could but be economically
extracted. My own experiments, Mr. Allen’s seven acres of ramie near
Changi (Singapore), Mr. Bluutschli’s Paya Nibong Estate in Del, leave
no doubt on this point. JI have therefore the fullest belief in the
ultimate success of ramie in the Native States, and I am confident
that my estimate of yield will prove below the truth. At the same
time it will be well to remember that if ramie is not to be weighed
down by initial expenses it must be undertaken on a pretty large
scale. If due allowance is made for this in the tentative experiments
which may be made in your parts I have no fear of the results,

Yours faithfully,
(Signed) E, Marnirv.

(Curator, Perak Museum, to Mr. E. Mathieu.)

PERAK Museum, TAIPING,
DEAR SIR, 13th April, 1897.

I have to acknowledge with thanks the sample of ramie fibre prepared
by the “Faure” machine, which you have been kind enough to send me
with your letter of the 6th instant.

The fibre is certainly very nice, and if the machine can turn out
similar stuff in the large way on an estate I should think it will prove a
valuable machine.

I have forwarded the sample to the British Resident, and afterwards
will place it in the Museum along with the other ramie specimens.

Aguin thanking you for the sample.
I am,
E. Matuigev, EsqQ., Yours truly,
Siegtap Estatr, SINGAPORE. (Signed) L. Wray, JUN.

RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 119
(British Resident, to Curator, Perak Museum.)

BRITISH RESIDENCY, PERAK,
20TH ApRIL, 1897.
My Dear WRay,

Iam much obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken about
ramie. I do not see that Government can do anything to help in the way
of making an experiment here. The experiment would have to be most
carefully carried out, and we have no one available to look after it.

Government might give a free grant of Jand to a man with some
capital on conditions.

I think this correspondence should be printed for private circulation.
Mr. Mathieu seems to have no objection. Could you undertake to arrange
the papers for the Government Printer, and to revise proofs?

Yours sincerely,
(Signed) W. H. TREACHER.

FURTHER NOTES ON RAMIE CULTIVATION.

It is by no means to be taken for granted that any land
in the Straits will grow ramie, as has been assumed by several
people who have written on the subject. The following in-
stances will make this clear. Some plants were obtained by Mr.
H. A. W. Aylesbury from the Botanical Gardens, Penang, on
the 9th May, 1897, and planted at Kampong Dew, in freshly
cleared jungle land, and Mr. Boyd, the Manager, reports that
they are now, after the lapse of nine months, only about one
foot high, and growing very badly. In the same soil coffee,
Para rubber, coconuts, nutmegs, padi, etc. are growing most
satisfactorily. Mr. F. A. Stephens, at Jebong Estate, also
reports that ramie does not grow with him. The Messrs. Tait
have planted a few clumps in rich alluvial land at Tanjong
Malim, and they look miserable, while in the same beds are
balsams and other flowers, which are growing luxuriantly.

An analysis of the ashes of the plant shews that the main
constituents of the soil which are required by the plant are
potash, soda, lime, common salt and phosphoric acid. It is
a deficiency of one or more of these substances which renders
the soil in places unsuited to the growth of ramie, and in
attempting to grow it in such localities a careful soil analysis
would have to be made, and the manuring so managed that this
constituent is supplied in a form that may be accessible to the
plant. We know that in most districts of Perak there is a
great deficiency of lime and phosphoric acid,

120 RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

There is some ramie growing well near Taiping, on the red
soil formed by the decomposition of granite, almost im situ. In
such soil the decaying feldspars of the granite would probably
yield nearly all the mineral substances required by the plant, in
a form that it could assimilate.

The unsuitability of the soil can be remedied by the intelli-
gent application of manure, but climate is beyond control, and
the rainfall is therefore the most important of all points to take
into consideration in choosing the locality for the cultivation of
ramie. It must be not only Targe, but it must be evenly distri-
buted throughout the year, otherwise the crop will be damaged
by each drought. The effect of dry weather is that the stalks,
instead of growing up straight and single, become stunted,
crooked and much “branched, in which state they are useless for
producing anything but the most inferior quality of fibre.
Further, it is necessary, on the setting in of the rains after
a drought, to cut out all these dry peeenier stalks as, though
they may eventually grow tall, they will never produce good
straight fibre. The loss is therefore not confined to the period
of the actual dr y weather.

An examination of the rainfall records of this State, shews
that the area which is best suited to the growth of ramie is that
which stretches between Taiping and Selama, at the base of the
Bubo-Tjau-Inas range of hills. As the distance from the hills
increases the rainfall diminishes, and at distances of about six
miles from the base of the hills near Taiping not one half is
recorded. There is a considerable quantity of unoccupied land
in this tract of country, which is all most excellently situated in
respect to transport, as it is well served by roads and the rail-
way line now in progress.

The rainfall for the past eighteen years recorded at Taiping
and Selama is given in detail in the subjoined table. In the
last column is given the mean rainfall deduced from the
monthly records. The same facts are shewn graphically in the
accompanying diagrams. The observing station at Taiping is in
the hospital, and is situated some two miles from the foot of
the hills. At Selama, which is about thirty miles distance in a
northerly direction, the observatory is also in the hospital and
is six or eight miles from the base of the hills, but there the
foot-hills extend to a much further extent than they do near
Taiping, projecting from the range in ridges between the valleys,
and apparently carrying the area of excessive rainfall much
further out from the range. A careful imspection of these
statistics will shew that for ramie cultivation the climate of this
portion of the State is almost ideal.

121

IN PERAK.

RAMIE CULTIVATION

SL.LOL | PL.6LL| EF. SLT | FO.PST | 99.061 |FL.SST| FL.SST | £8.91 | 46.9hT | 69.SST | 68. TLL | $9.FSL| SF.Z9T | F6.G8L| 19.891 | 6E.1ZZ] SL.9LL | 6L.LL1| 9F.8ST.

|
|
|
|

SI.ST | $€.06 | L0.8L | €4-FL | 48.01 | 80.01 | €0.6 | 19.12 | 6F.EL | 80.6 | TP.6T | I6.SL | 92.2 | ST.9L | TZ.0L | 18.61 | #6.0@ | 02.93 | SL.L “* TaquLada(T

9G.ST | GF.FT | $8.46 | SE.IL | F9.F | 62.ET | $2.0 | 86.08 | F0.1L | 9T.IL | 60.62 GS.9L | £4.16 | $6.60 | 86.61 | 66.98 | OF.1G | 68.81 | 8Z.F3 | “** LaqUIOAON

88.16 | 99.81 | 9.4L | FS.LF | 86.41 | OF.86 | €S.6L | 98.96 | 6.4L | FZ.ET | 09.46 | €L.4T | 6Z.9L | Sh.Ss | L0.9L | #Z.13 | 18.88 | £42.38 | 9.8L | °° IIGOIOY,
€L.1IL | 94.6 | 46.06 | 62.8 | p98 G9.IL | 14.4 | AT.8L | PE.0 | S8.EL | 29.61 | 96.9 | SLPS | 61.13 | 3.F | 00.9 | 99.8 | $8.61 La.L Joquioydag

PC.1L | PL.IL | PF.E | TPS | $9.9 | FE.PL | OL.0L | GFT | 88.81 | 8L.9 | 69.6 | 44.21 | 90.81 | 68.11 | GP.ZL | 69.02 | 9F.IL | SF.9T | G68 | °° qsnony

HL | 00.6 | 6O.F | 18.91 | 64.h | OF.IL | 09.0 | Gh.o | 1.2L | 8.5L | 8.6 | 88. | 2.8L | 90.6 | SLZ | 98.6 | FF.9 | 68.8 | FO.g | °° Arne
G6.L | 76.8 | 06.9 | 90.81 v4 | Gh | 01.6 | &6.F | SLS | €L9 | 49.01 | Shh | 64.6 | 46.9 | 89.00 | SS | H.S | SPST | 6L.b | oun (’
16.7. | 4P.GL | 86.9 | 86.FL | 16.9 | 19.FL | 18.46 | €4.c1 | SL.FL | 28.86 | 80.21 | 09.21 | $9.21 | 48.06 | FL.FT | 63.81 | 90.6 | 60.6 | 29.62 | °°’ AR
09.81 | T8.24T | 80.61 | 69.81 | 9E.FL | 69.41 | SO.LT | 40.81 | P8.8L | 98.12 | ST.ST | $4.01 | 06.81 | BF.1% | 91.8% | 90.48 | 02.91 | SL.FT | 8.91 | °° pady
€8.FL | $8.86 | 79.16 | 98.FL | FL.CL | SP.ST | 94.91 | Ov.F | 6.1L | 90.6 | IL.6L] **° | 92.6 | S.FL | 09.01 | 6L.2E | SLOL | $3.F | 02.91 | “* TOILB PL
90.61 | 60.6T | O€.8T | 94.8T | LE.1T | £0.8 | G2.41 | 19.4 | 20.01 | $6.10 | 19.6 | 28.6 | 94.4 | S¢.9L | 08.12 | 2Le | 29.90 | $8.8 | 9.2 | °° SIVA OF
F6.GL | 90.91 | 69.FT | 94.1 | FL.OL | 19.8 | O48 | OF.FL | 98.ST | TS.€T | 08.01 | 16.18 | ZE.8 | FSF | 09.ET | 92.8 | £9.06 | FL.1L | 22.6 | °° Arenuer

=

oZ2

=e AOST | 96ST | S6SL | FEST | E6ST | GEST | TG8T | OGST | GS8T | S88L | Z8SL | 98ST | Ssst | PSST | ESST | SSSL | ISSL | OST
=)

a

‘2681 OL 0881 NOW TIVANIVY DNidl VL

IN PERAK.

RAMIE CULTIVATION

TL.€E1| $0.81 | 6G.9FT | 6.961 | 98.26 |68.LET | 90.931 | $9.9FT | TS.EFT] 49.981 | OL.SEL | PZ. FFL | O8.FET | [8.S9T | 99.STL | £9.PIL| 08.6GT | 4h.ZET| 69.82

LL.IL | $9.FT | 49.21 | $9.11 | 60.8 | 68h | SL.IL | 86.20 | 68.8 | 18.9 | G4.6T | 4.0L | $8.9 | 80.8L | S4.F | 16.4 | SLL | OFT | 94.11 | *** taquteseq

TL.GL | 18.6 | $2.86 | £5.4 | PL.6 | OL-IL | 08.21 | 18.08 | FZ.FL | 96.91 | £9.06 | 94.21 | LZ.ZL | SF.PL | 96.9T | GF.ES | $0.21 | ST.ST | SL.i1 | °°’ ToquIeAONy

€6.91 | OL.ST | 1G.9i | 6F.93 | PE.9T | £8.81 | 20.1 | 68.7% | L0.E1 | G4. | £0.26 | FP.LL | SP.ET | 08.16 | GF.ST | 20.61 | 96.06 | 9F.16 | 90.9 | °° 19G010O
¥9.0L | $9.8 | L9.ST | 6Z.1L | 89.¢ | FL.01 | 86.9 | 6E.8L | GE.OL | Z.ET | 60.ZL | 48.2 | 90.8L | SL.16 | $9.8 | S401 | 81.6 | 96.60 | **" ataquieydag
09.8 | 69.8 | 98. | 84.8 | 29.¢ | 6.3L | 12.6 | 86.2 | $8.6 | 28.6 | 06.4 | ST.ST | 20.S1 | 8.1L | 86.€ | &F.8 | 70.6 | 09.8 a5 ce qsnsny
94.4 | F6.9 | L8.9 | S8.1L | F.S | O9.1L | 08.6 | 86.6 | 86.ET | 91.6 f G6.9 | PL.ST | 8Z.0L | 89.9 | 8P.L | ST.OL | 46.9 + ne Aju
10,9/
G0.8 | 16.6 | 88.01 | 00.61 | 6F.9 | T8.0L | 6E.ST | OT.9 | OF.8 | SF.P ‘ "| 88.4 | 94.9 | 89.81 | 69.6 | 80.€ | TS. 96.€ a ad oun
00.7 | 0S.6 | 61.6 | TE.F | 6Z.1L | 16.16 | LP.1L | 99.9 | 69.8 | G9.6L | 99.21 | 40.1L | 60.06 | 86.96 | 2h.4 |; 96.81 | 6F.IT | 46.71 | ** oS Av
€6.ST | 06.61 | TZ.9T | 29.91 | SF.ST | 6.FL | 69.8 | SE.ET | SE.0L | 00.41 | SO.IL | TZ.ST | 8F.01 | 40.FL | 28.71 | 94.ST | SP.€6 | €9.0T | *"” i pady
99.0L | SP.97 | GG.OL | G9.0L | OL.9 | 4.6L | £6.01 | OL.TT GG.0L | 16.FT | $9.41 | 66.4 | 29.6 | 82.9 | 68.FL | Th.9 | 00.9 oy ae Qoreyy
€¢.4 | OFS | 0Z.0T | 19.9 | 00.9 | 00.6 | $8.8 | ST.OT | SL.FL | 60. | €8.¢ | 44.8 | 1.9 | 19.9 | T9.0L | 94.6 | 69.4 | 8L.F ae vo Kienaqaq
LLL | 91.4 | 90.0L | S1.6 | PEF | 96.6 | OL | 69.4 | G9.1L | 80.FT | 9F.6 | 98.61 | 96.9 | SEE | 9.0L | o8. O8.ST | 76.71 | *"" w+ Arenue re

L681 | 968T | S6SL | FEST | GEST | G68 | T68T | OGSL | GSST | 88ST | ASST | OS8T | S8ST | FSSL | S8SL | GST | TS8T | OSST

*ATUIUO HT
ubofl

‘4681 OL O88f WOU TTVANIVY VINNVIOS

ug from JE80 to 897.

| 82 | 7688. | ae Tk

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et
B97 — Mea of He 78 Years. Mruche
—_t eee be ae ce ae ee ee

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Diagram Shewing the Monthly Rainfall registered in Taiping from J880t0I8 97,
Fa] 7680 | wear | vee [yous (| meen <[ ross | e8 | i887

wel 1860 _|_2067_|_70_|_2e Oe |
— | ££. |.
ee
oo | LoL ar La
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ST AN A ALA

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ee 1891. 18.92. 7893. 3894. | F895 | 7896 ig 7897 | Mean of the 16 Years.
40

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25 —-—-- 25
: i :

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| Diagram Shewing the Monthly Roirfall registered in Selama, from F680 to 897. |
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5
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‘0. 3 Si aed ek

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RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK. 123

There are a number of patentees in the field, who want
to make arrangements with planters to use their machines or
processes, and it is quite necessary to point out that they should
not be treated with unless, after a careful search in the Patent
Office, it can be proved that their patents are valid. It is to be
remembered that the possession of a patent in no way implies
that the invention is new, or that the document is worth more
than its value as waste paper. The Englsh Patent Office
will grant any number of patents for the same invention,
though only the one which was taken out first is valid. The
Office takes no responsibility in the matter, that rests wholly
with the patentee. It is also to be remembered that an English,
or even a Straits patent, gives no right to the holder to charge
royalties or in any way interfere with the use of the invention in
the Native States, nothing but a local grant will do that, and up
to the present time no rights have been eranted in the Native
States for the treatment of ramie, so that any machine or
process may now be used in the Native States free of all
royalties.

The large reward offered for many years by the Indian Gov-
ernment, and other rewards offered in France, have turned the
attention of numbers of people to the subject, and many patents,
amounting to some hundreds, have been taken out for the treat-
ment of ramie, so that at the present day it would be an exces-
sively difficult thing to invent a decorticator or de-gumming
process which would form the subject of a patent maintainable
in a Court of Law. Every imaginable form of drum, beater and
scutcher, and combination of them, has been patented over and
over again. Many machines have been built and tried, but the
greater proportion have never gone beyond drawings and des-
criptions. Most probably amongst these latter are some
machines which would work if decorticating is practicable on
a commercial scale.

A document has lately been circulated locally, by the owner
of a decorticating machine, offering to sell his machines subject
to a royalty. According to the fioures given in this paper a set
of decorticators and the engines to drive them would cost
£1,898 and the charge for the use of them would be the modest
sum of £10,787 per year.

The “ Gomess”’ process owners, I understand, are willing to
put up works, if a sufficiently large area of cultivation is
guaranteed, and treat the ramie, on condition of receiving 25
per cent of the out-turn. This is a more reasonable propo-
sition, though it is doubtful if it could be worked in practice.

a

124. RAMIE CULTIVATION IN PERAK.

In the foregoing correspondence Mr. Mathieu urges the
impossibility of producing ribbons by boiling the stems and
hand seutching, but as it has been done there is no reason why
it could not be done again. ‘This process is known as the
“ Fleury-Moriceau” process, and was worked at the Paris Ex-
hibition of 1889 and, according to the official report made for
the Government of India, and published in the Kew Builetin,
one small tank was proved by actual trial to be capable of
turning out one hundred and sixty-six pounds of dry fibre
per day of ten hours. The time of boiling was from five to
fifteen minutes, according to the age of the stems. These are
facts which shew that the boiling process can hold its own with
most if not any of the decorticators at present invented. It is
also to be remembered that there is no loss of fibre by this
process, that the whole of the wood is removed, that the ribbons
are not broken or twisted in any way, and that they are in
excellent condition for passing straight into the de-gumming
tanks. Any person with a certain amount of mechanical ability
would have no difficulty in improving the process so that a tank
would turn out twice the amount stated and at the same time
reduce the handling to a minimum. This would be done by
using the waste heat to raise the temperature of the stems
to near the boiling point before actually going into the bath,
and by having a continous mechanical traveller to put them
through the apparatus in place of doing it by hand in batches.
There would appear to he no difficulty in designing a boiler
of this description capable of treating the annual produce of one
acre of land in the space of three days. If carefully designed so
as to prevent the loss of heat, the stalks would supply all
the fuel necessary, and two men should be able to work it and
scutch the stems.

The machine which took the gold medal at the last trials in
Paris was the ‘“ Faure” machine, which has already been men-
tioned. It is sold at £36 in London, and appears to turn
out fibre nearly equal in value to hand prepared China- grass.
The London agent, Mr. 'T. Barraclough, also advertises to
supply apparatus for de-gumming quite free from all patent
rights.

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE PERAK MUSEUM
FOR 1896.

By L. Wray, JUN.

CASES.

During the year two 24-feet by 435-feet table cases were
built to replace four old cases containing the collection of
Malayan weapons. Two 15-feet by 43-feet table cases were
glazed with plate in place of common glass, and a large pier
case was also glazed with plate glass. Five new insect cabinets,
on a novel plan of construction, were partly built. These latter
are to take the insects which cannot be put out into the exhibi-
tion cases.

A sum of $460.22 was expended on case building, while
all the glazing, varnishing, painting, etc., was done by the
Museum staff.

LABELS.

Type written labels have now nearly entirely replaced the
old hand written ones, and about a thousand cards for the
Library Card Catalogue were also type written.

ETHNOGRAPHY.

Further extensive additions have been made to the collec-
tion of Malay silver work, 96 pieces having been purchased.
This brings the number up to over 400 pieces in all.

Mr. K. W. Birch presented a very fine example of an early
Malayan tombstone, obtained from the Bruas district. This
is the second now in the collection. A number of beautifully
executed models of Siamese boats were purchased, and a con-
siderable number of Malayan household appliances, traps, fish-
ing gear, games, etc., were collected, while a few weapons were
added to the already large series of these objects previously
obtained.

The great requirement in this section is more space. Three
times the present floor space could easily be filled without going
outside the Malayan region. Another class of exhibit for which

126 ANNUAL REPORT ON THE PERAK MUSEUM.

there is now no room is a collection of ethnographical photo-
eraphs. This would be a most interesting addition to the
section.
HERBARIUM.
Five hundred and two mounted and named herbarium speci-
mens were received from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta,
and added to the herbarium.

ECONOMIC BOTANY.

This section has been much increased, and could be further
extended with advantage if space would permit. A well-made
copper oven was obtained from England to take the place of
the make-shift locally made one previously in use, and has
been found to be of great service in drying and devitalizing
specimens previous to sealing them up in the glass topped
tins, which have been so successfully used for preserving them
for some years past.

An interesting series of samples from the Trans Krian
sugar estate was ‘presented by Mr. F. Pulsford. Specimens
of cleaned Perak grown ramie fibre, and many other vegetable
products were added to the collection. Amongst these mention
may be made of some particularly well cured Liberian coffee
from an estate near Gopeng, contributed by Mr. F. D. Osborne.
This coffee has been fetching a better price in Singapore than

any other produced in the Straits The high value placed on
it is due to its colour, and not to any superiority of the bean.
The Liberian See erown on the hill at Waterloo Estate ap-
parently has a finer bean than any from the plains. Some
trees planted by Mir. Cecil Wray, in 1880-1, are well grown
vigorous bushes in full bearing, while trees of four years old
planted by Sir Graeme Elphinstone, on land cleared twelve
years previously, compare most favourably with bushes of the
same age on the low lands planted on newly cleared forest
land.

The collection of Perak woods now numbers 207 examples.
It is of more than ordinary interest as it shews that there are
so many fine and handsome woods in the jungles besides the
four or five kinds known to Huropeans.

GEOLOGY.

The general collection of rocks and fossils has been arranged
and put out in a table case, and the local geological and miner-
alogical collections much extended, owing to the appropriation of
another table case to their accommodation. A series of ver y
interesting gold specimens was presented by Mr. W. Bibby,

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE PERAK MUSEUM. 127

from the Raub mines, and another by Mr. T. Blamey from
the Punjon mine, while Mr. Treloar gave a collection illustrating
the processes of dressing lode tin-ore.

STAFF.

The Taxidermist retired on pension at the end of 1895, and
the Crown Agents have been unable to engage any one to fill
up the vacancy on the terms offered by the Government, so
that there has been no Taxidermist during the whole of 1896

Mr. Reutens, the caretaker, was promoted to a clerkship in
the Secretariat on the 6th July, and his place was filled up by
Mr. J. A. Jansen from the Audit Office. On the 30th November
his services were dispensed with and Mr. Low Leng Fong, the
Assistant Taxidermist, who had been refused any increase in
his then position, was appointed as caretaker. A new man,
Mr. Low Kooi Fong, was taken on as Assistant Taxidermist
at the end of December. It is perhaps unnecessary to say
that these changes and the vacancy already mentioned have
seriously interfered with the work of the Department.

FINANCIAL.

The unexpended balances for the year amounted to $131.40,
or, including Establishments, to $1, 356.40. The revenue collected
during the year was $155.18, against an estimate of $50.

9th March, 1897.

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS
TO THE MUSEUM COLLECTIONS, BY PURCHASE,
COLLECTION AND DONATION, DURING THE
YEAR ENDING DECEMBER, 1896.

Kait Parangai.

A Curved Knife.

Malay Scales.

A Snake. (Given by H. C. Barnard, Esq.)
A Silver Pending.

Model Sugar Cane Press.

Malay Stocks.

Two Rat Traps.

One Brass Dish and Lamp.

Flowering Specimens of the Tree which yields Malay
Varnish.

Sappan Wood.

Water Bottles.

Fishing Spears.

Silver Batil Bertutup.

Silver Sirih Leaf Holder.
Silver Lime Box.

Silver Pinang Box.

Silver and Suasa Tobacco Box.

A Spider, Upper Perak. (Given by Inspector F. S. B.
Lamb.)

A Burmese Silver Coin found in Taiping. (Given by Mr. S.
A. M. Reutens.)

A Silver Chaping.
Three Breeding Pearls.

PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS. 129

A Silver Water Jar.

Four Silver Panels, 4 Silver Gilt Ornaments, and 2 Silver
Balls.

Silver -mounted Coconut-shell Water Bottle.
Cotton Mill and Spinning Wheel.

Malay Anchor.

Wheel for making Pottery.

Rice Mill.

Water Jar.

A large Silver Batil.

A Silver Batil Bertutup.

A Silver Plate.

Three hundred and four mounted Herbarium Specimens.
(Given by the Superintendent Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta.)

A Bat.
Two Throwing Spears, Patani pattern.
Models of Malay Mining Implements.
Two Model Pig Traps.
Two Brass Sinh Holders.
Obsidian, from Pahang. (Given by D. H. Wise,. Esq.)
Malay Silver Ladle in form of a Sendok.
A Gee Hin Banner. (Given by C. Wagner, Esq.)
. uae Tin from Siak, Kinta. (Given by F. C. Langford,
8q.
A Caterpillar. (Given by P. J. Nelson, Esq.)
Sample of Gutta Percha from Dichopsis Clarkeana.
Two Silver Kris Holders.
Insects said to injure Padi. (Given by A. W. Just, Esq.)
Large Brass Dish on Foot.
Quail and Fish Traps.
Starch from Ubi Ara.
Aker Kunyit.
An old Larut Police Badge, found at Matang. (Given by
Mr. Ho Pak Leng.)

130 PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS.
Portrait of H.H. the Sultan of Perak. (Given by H.H.
the Sultan of Perak.)
A Dulang used for separating Gold from Tin- sand.
A Basin used in separating Gold from Tin- sand.
A Silver Cooking Pot.
A Silver Batil.
A Silver Tobacco Box.
A Silver Hair Comb.
A Silver Gilt Kalat Dai.
Silver Lime Box.
Silver Chimbal.
A Karangtong.
Kabong Vinegar.
Fish Traps.
Water Bottle Covers.
Sticks used by Malay women for blacking the teeth.

Judicial and Revenue Stamps. (Given by the Acting State
Treasurer.)

Model of Spring Gun.
Model of Spring Trap.
Model of Bow Trap for small Animals.

Specimens of Stinging Trees, called Jelatong Gajah and
Rusa.

Malay Dish Cover.

A Gun formerly the property of the first Resident of Perak,
and taken from his boat when he was murdered at Pasir Salak.
(Given by E. W. Birch, Esq.)

A Silver Tobacco Box.

A Butterfly from the Kinta hills. (Given by E. L. Bailey,
Esq.)

Pahang Tin Money. (Given by D. H. Wise, Esq.)
A Teal, (Dendrocygna Javanica.) .

A Heron.

The Indian Ringed Plover, (Aegialitis Philippensis.)

PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS. 131

A Boat-shaped ingot of Tin found in Tupai. (Given by
J. Ward, Esq.)

A Silver-mounted Buntal Kris.

A large Silver Tobacco Box.

A Silver covered Cup for Oil, (Mangko Bertutup.)

A Silver Tablet used for Divination, called Chuchu Karah.

Edible variety of Castor Oil Seed.

Two young Bamboo Rats.

A Biauak.

A Boat-shaped Dulang, Batang Padang.

A Malay Tin Crocodile.

A series of eight Samples of Lode Tin-ore at different
stages of dressing. (Given by T. H. Treloar, Esq.)

Residue left after washing Tin-ore for Gold. (Given by
C. C. Scott, Esq.)

A sample of the first Gold obtained by the Cyanide Process
in Perak. (Given by Sutton, Esq., Manager, Bukit Mas Mine.)

A sample of Alluvial Gold from Bukit Mas, near Tapah.
A Tapir.

A Screw Press used for making a kind of Macaroni.

A Spear with two blades.

A small Water-rail, (Porzana Cinerea), Kamunting.
Twenty-three species of Marine Shells, from Singapore.
Two Sea Horses.

A covered Silver Cup, on foot.

A Coconut Shell Spoon.

A pair of Carved Coconut Shell Censers.

Silver Scent Bottle.

Silver Pillow Ends.

A Poko Nasi and Poko Sirih.

Two Malayan Dish Covers.

A Silver- mounted Fern Stem Basket.

Two Mat Baskets.

132 PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS.

A carved Wooden and Coconut Shell Spoon.
Two Water Bottle Covers.

A worked Dish Cover.

Implements for Piercing the Noses of Buffaloes.
A Malay Silver Dish on three feet, with Cover.
Two Silver Spear Mounts.

A Silver Pending.

A Silver Chaping and Clasp.

Three Silver Buah Bharu.

A Silver Lime Box.

A Silver Chimbal.

A Silver Lime Box.

A Silver Chaping.

Two Wooden Trays for Cleaning Sekua, Semang.
Two spud-shaped Spears.

A Brass Sangku.

A Silver Labu Ayer.

A pair of Silver Pillow Ends.

Three pairs of Silver Pillow Ends.

Two Taji Biji Durian, a Malay Game.

Silver Dish, on foot.

Silver Water Bottle, (Labu Ayer.)

Stamp of Sir Hugh Low, formerly used to stamp official
correspondence, etc. (Given by W. H. Treacher, Esq.)

A small Iron Gun found in making the foundation for the
new ward in the Gaol at Taipmg. (Given by G. M. Gregory,
Esq.)

A Silver Ankob.

A Silver Gunong Sumpit Bras.

A Nycticebus Tardigradus.

A pair Silver Pillow Ends and an Angkob.

A large Silver Chimbal.

A pair of Silver Anklets.

PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS. 133

A Silver Bunga Kaitor.

Four Tiles made by the Union Brick Yards, Krian. (Given
by G. Bird, Esq.)

Silver Chimbal.

Two Silver Lime Boxes.

One Silver Bead.

A Silver Angkob.

A set of four Silver Chimbals.

A collection of eleven Specimens of Gold Quartz from the
Raub Mine, Pahang. (Given by W. Bibby, Esq.)

Two Samples of Liberian Coffee from Gopeng. (Given by
F. D. Osborne, Esq.)

A collection of seventeen Malayan Tin Animals, Kinta.

Specimen of Loadstone, Tambun, Kinta. (Given by Cecil
Wray, Esq.)

Galena from Tanjong Rambutan, Kinta. (Given by Cecil

Wray, Esq.)
A Silver Water Jar.
A collection of Minerals. (Given by C. C. Scott, Esq.)
Two samples Sugar. (Given by F’. Puleford, Esq.)

Three samples Rum. Do.
One sample Molasses. Do.
One sample Arrowroot Flour. — Do.
Two samples Rum Shrub. Do.
White Mica and Quartz. Do.

Eight Photographs of natives of the Island of Nias.
(Given by G. B. Cerruti, Esq.)

A collection of Basket Work.

A Silver Batil Bertutup, on three feet.

A Brass Plate.

A Silver Lime Box.

Head of a Buffalo.

A large Silver Sirih Box containing four Chimbals.
Three Bird Skins.

134 PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS.

Two carved Coconut- shell Spoons.

Nutmegs and Mace, Kamunting.

Three Silver Siamese Coms. (Given by Mr. Choomsat.)
A Silver Box and Plate, called Telop.

A Silver Water Jar Cover.

A sample of Iron Pyrites in Quartz, Selama. (Given by
N. Kendall, Esq.)

Samples of native prepared Ramie Fibre.

Sample of Ramie Fibre prepared by the “‘Gomess”’ Process.
(Prepared in the Museum.)

Samples of Dried Chilis (4 varieties ), Ground-nuts, Betel-
nuts, Aker Kunyet, Cloves, Kunyet, ete.

An Owl. (Given by Mr. E. Lesslar.)
Pair Silver Bracelets.

An ancient Malay Tombstone, from Ulu Bruas. (Given by
E. W. Birch, Esq.)

Alluvial Wolfram, Chumor. (Given by G. B. Cerruti, Esq.)

Auriferous Dyke- stone from 64 feet level, Bulit Mas Mine.
(Given by J. Addis, Esq.)

Two samples of Ramie Fibre, grown in Perak and dressed
by the Socicté de la Ramie Francaise. (Given by F. D. Osborne,
Esq.)

Dried Getah Taban Leaves. (Collected.)
Dried Getah Taban Bark. (Collected.)
Malay Coconut - shell Scratch - back.
Tin Mounted Coconut - shell Teapot.
Main Kumbang, a Malay Game.
Tandok Krebau, a Malay Game.

Seven models of Siamese Boats.

Two Siamese Musical Instruments.

A Squirrel Trap.

A Collection of 60 Shells.

A Trap to catch Broh.

A Fishing Net, Pukat.

PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS. 135
Specimens of Euthalia Adonia and Charaxes Schreiberi.
(Given by Mr. B. Jalleh.)

Collection of Gold Quartz and other specimens from the
Penjom Mine, Pahang. (Given by T. Blamey, Esq.)

A Tortoise (Geoemyda Spinosa), Penang. (Given by S. 8.
Flower, Esq.)

A Toad, Penang, (Bufo Quadriporcatus). (Given by S. 8S.
Flower, Esq.)

A sample of native Amalgam, from a mine at Changkat
Mamot. (Given by G. B. Cerruti, Esq.)

A Silver Writing Case and Bead.

A Gold-mounted Silver Pending.

A Silver-mounted Hair Comb.

A Gold- mounted Silver Lime Box.

A Silver Box and Plate for hair oil.

A Kwang Tung Coin.

A Tiger Civet, (Prionodon Sp.)

A Tortoise.

A Leaf Insect. (Given by HE. W. Birch, Esq.)

An Instrument of Discipline formerly used in Malay Schools.
(Given by W. T. Wrench, Esq.)

Sample of Lode Tin-ore from Jeram Batang, Kuantan,
Pahang. (Given by W. T. Wrench, Esq.)

A Locust from “The Cottage.” (Given by F. A. Swetten-
ham, Esq.)

A Snake from “The Cottage.” (Given by F. A. Swetten-
ham, Esq.)

A Mungoose, (Herpestes Mongo.) (Given by S. S. Flower,
Esq.)

Five samples of Barks used in Tanning.

A Silver Dish with Cover.

Five Silver Spoons, 1 Bead, 1 Chaping.

A Prionodon.

A Silver Tiie for reaping padi.

Two Snakes from “ The Cottage.” (Given by F. A. Swetten-
ham, Esq.)

136 PRINCIPAL ADDITIONS TO COLLECTIONS.

Samples of Palm Sugars.

Fifteen varieties of Coconuts.

LIBRARY.

Annual Reports of the State Mineralogist, California State
Mining Bureau, for the years 1886 to 1894. (Given by the State
Mining Bureau of California.)

Bulletin of the California State Mining Bureau, Nos. 1
to 6. (Given by the State Mining Bureau of California.)

Thirteen Geological Maps and Plans. ((iven by the State
Mining Bureau of Califoria.)

Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, Queens-
land. (Given by the Department of Agriculture, Queensland.)

The Hikayat Raja Budiman, A Malay Folk Tale.

The Hikayat Raja Budiman, English translation.

Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta. (Given
by the Superintendent, Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta.)

If Public Libraries why not Public Museums, by Edward
8S. Morse. (Given by the Sinithsonian Institution.)

Records of the Geological Survey of India. (Given by the
Director of the Geological Survey of India.)

Smithsonian Report, United States National Museum, 1893.
(Given by the Smithsonian Institution.)

The Flora of British India, Part XXI. (Given by the
Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew.)

Agricultural Bulletin of the Malay Peninsula, No. 5, 1896.
(Given by the Botanic and Forest Department, Singapore.)

Hast Coast Etchings, by H. Clifford.

Anales Del Museo Nacional, Montevideo, No. 4, 1896.
(Given by the National Museum of Montevideo.)

Horn Measurements and Weights of the Great Game of the
World, by Rowland Ward. (Given by the Publisher.)

Heliozoa Bearbeitet, Von Dr. F. Schandiun. (Given by
Herren R. Frieldlander and Sohn, Berlin.)

Indian Museum Notes, Vol. III, No. 6, and Vol. IV, No. 1.
(Given by the Trustees of the Indian Museum.)

The Principles of Museum Administration, by G. Brown
Good. (Given by the Author.)

SMITHSONIAN |

WANN

NSTITUTION LIBRARIES

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