CHAPTER IV
TAPPING SYSTEMS
Broadly there are only two methods employed in obtaining the latex from Hevea Brasiliensis. The first is that employed in South America, where incisions are made by means of a light axe. The other is the system of excision, or paring, of the bark practised on plantations in the East.
In the early days of the plantation industry, the South American method seems to have been employed, and the writer has knowledge of trees on one of our best-known estates in Malaya which still exhibit the outward and visible signs of that method. At a comparatively early stage, however, the method of excision was introduced. Curiously enough there appears to be no record of its inception or of the individual who was responsible for the substitution of this method. We have been so accustomed to regard it as one of the ordinary facts of estate procedure, that this point seems to have escaped notice and enquiry.
As a variant of these two main methods, a slight vogue was for a short while obtained by the operation known as “pricking.” This was generally combined with excision of bark, and was then known as the “paring and pricking” method; but the simple operation of pricking alone had its adherents, and various forms of instruments were designed to achieve the object. As a means for obtaining a flow of latex, pricking may have been effective, but the general difficulties attaching to the collection of the latex was such as to put the method out of favour.
In the employment of “paring and pricking,” a thin shaving of bark was excised on one occasion. At the next tapping no bark was excised, but a pricking instrument was used along the previously cut surface. It was not proved that any advantage was gained by this method, which was more commonly employed in Ceylon than elsewhere, and it would be surprising to find it in use at the present day.
In the ordinary way the method of excision is practised in such a manner that the “cut” gradually descends to the base of the tree.
Planters with original views, and of an enquiring nature, often query the common practice; and it has been suggested that “as the latex descends by the force of gravity,” one’s paring should be done in an upward direction, thus obtaining a greater pressure of latex—and hence a greater flow. It will be obvious that it would be no simple matter to collect effectively the latex thus obtained from the under edge of a sloping cut, but apart from this the argument would appear to be founded upon what is now accepted to be a fallacy—viz., that the latex per se is manufactured in the leaves and gravitates down the tree.