p. [65].
This plant flourishes to a great extent in Perak and its stems may be cut off twice a year. It only needs to be cultivated, for industry to be provided with a new and precious element. In fact there are few who do not know that the greater part of Chinese silk stuffs are woven with the ramiè fibres, but its utility might have a much larger extension if it were made an object of study by those capable of drawing from it profitable results.
Very few lands, I think, have been so favoured by capricious Nature as the Malay Peninsula where she seems to have taken delight in bestowing her treasures of flora and fauna as well as underground ones, for several gold and tin mines are being worked, whilst lead, copper, zinc, antimony, arsenic and many other metals are constantly being found, besides some rich veins of wolfram, although a real bed of the latter ore has not yet been discovered.
If once the still lazy but honest forces of the Sakais could be utilized by turning them towards agriculture, all this natural wealth might be sent to the World's markets and a sparse but good people, susceptible of great progress, would be gradually civilized.
The Para Rubber, referred to above, constitutes one of the greatest riches of the Malay agricultural industry.
Both soil and climate are very favourable for its cultivation in the Peninsula, so much so that a tree attains the maturity necessary for the production of this valuable article in four years, if special care and attention is given it, or in five or six if left to its natural growth (as in Ceylon), whilst in other places it takes eight and even ten years.
Not many years ago the British Government had a limited space of ground planted, with seeds brought from Brazil, as a simple experiment. The result was encouraging enough to induce the Institute of Tropical Researches—initiated under the auspices of the Liverpool University, with the object of developing Colonial commerce—to make plantations which in one season yielded no less than 150,000 pounds of gum.
About three years ago 60,000 acres of land were planted with Para Rubber, the Government providing the seed at a very low rate.
It is calculated that each acre contains from 125 to 250 trees according to the quality of the ground and its position.