Wickham, for it was that long before the first rubber tree
flowered in the gardens at Heneratgoda, sixteen miles from
Colombo, where the trees had finally been planted. In this year,
1881, experiments in tapping began, and it was plain that
Wickham's dream was to be realized.

From these few trees, so carefully tended in their youth, has
sprung the whole rubber industry of Ceylon and the Far East.
Wickham must indeed have been proud to see the plantations
spreading from Ceylon to Malaya, where rubber was eagerly taken up
by planters who were despairing of ever making a living out of
coffee, and later to Sumatra and Java and Borneo. To-day rubber
plantations cover an area of over 3,000,000 acres, with a yearly
output of almost 360,000 tons, or about ten times the average
yearly output of "wild rubber."

There is a curious coincidence in the fact that Wickham got his
idea about planting rubber trees in India at about the same time
that men in America began to experiment with the horseless
carriage. You may never have stopped to think of it, but
mechanical experts say that without rubber pneumatic tires,
automobiles could never have become the fine, swift vehicles they
are. It was a wonderful thing that when in the early part of this
century the automobile industry suddenly burst forth with a demand
for rubber so great that Brazil could never have hoped to supply
it, there was found ready in the Far East, as a result of the
planting that had been done there, a supply that took care of the
sudden emergency.

A little more than ten years ago American business men began to