find a locality having a moist climate with an evenly distributed
rain-fall where the temperature throughout the year does not fall
below seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and where there is protection
from the wind. There must also be, of course, access to a steady
labor supply and a convenient shipping port. As the proper climate
is a tropical one, there is usually dense jungle to be cleared
away. Immense trees and thick bushes, rank straggling weeds and
vines form an almost impenetrable jungle. To turn such a place
into a garden spot means a genuine battle against jungle
conditions. But gradually trees, shrubs and undergrowth are torn
out and burned, laying bare the rich soil ready for the plow of
the planter.

Meantime the rubber seedlings have been sprouted in nurseries.
When the ground is ready they are carefully taken up and
transplanted to the holes which have been made for them in the
field where they are to be permanently planted.

Though the growth of the trees is very rapid, sometimes as much as
twenty feet in the first year, there are five years of anxious
waiting and guarding against winds and disease before they are
ready to be tapped and so begin to reward the planters. At first
the yield of a tree is only about one-half pound of rubber a year,
and this increases so slowly that it is many years before it
amounts to as much as ten pounds a year. The highest yield ever
recorded was given by one of the original trees set out in the
gardens at Heneratgoda, which gave ninety-six and one-half pounds
in one year.

How different is life on the rubber plantations of to-day from the