Rubber tree

“ In Africa it seems probable that the production of rubber from vines is likely to be entirely superseded in process of time, and replaced by the plantations of trees which are already being established in those districts in which careful experiment has determined the kind of rubber tree best adapted to the locality. ”

“ Not content with the trees that grow spontaneously in the forests in this part of the country, a certain general—one of many we met here—conceived the idea of cultivating the rubber tree and had, accordingly, during the preceding year, set out no fewer than a half million small trees, and had it in purpose to plant many times this number in the near future. ”

“ Naturally an absolutely dead and crumbling wood will smoulder, but does not develop sufficient smoke. A green timber will give an acrid and moist smoke, but demands the consumption of a certain amount of dry timber in addition if it is to be used.
Rubber-tree prunings and sawn rubber trees obtained by thinning-out may be used in mixture with dead wood, provided the logs are stacked to dry in the sun for some weeks before use. ”

“ When the seeds are ready to drop the outer covering of the pod bursts with a loud report, the seeds shooting in all directions.
This is Nature's clever scheme to spread the Hevea family. The tree grows wild in the hot, damp forests of the Amazon valley and in other parts of South America that have a similar climate. The ideal climate for the rubber tree is one which is uniform all the year round, from eighty-nine to ninety-four degrees at noon, and riot lower than seventy degrees at night. ”

“ As we start off along a track that has little or no more claim to be called a path than had the Indian trail in my story, I point out to you a specimen of the rubber-yielding tree that is a native of these forests. Very soon you notice for yourselves that there are numbers of these trees in the district. Were you a son of these wilds, wholly dependent on your surroundings for anything and everything in the way of supplies, would you not try to find out whether this tree cannot be made to provide you with something to eat or drink or play with? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rubber is the principal occasion for its being and growth, and its commerce is rapidly increasing. In all directions lie the rubber forests, or more accurately the forests which contain rubber trees. For these do not grow conveniently in groves, except here and there occasionally a few trees, but scattered singly in the damp forest, perhaps 100 or 150 trees 351in an estrada or section of about 100 acres, an area which a single man can take care of. ”

“ By good luck the people of South America, Central America, Asia, and Africa, where the varieties of india-rubber, or caoutchouc, producing trees are found, have learned to tap the trees and take care of them and do not kill them for a single harvest. The rubber is the hardened juice of the tree; when it first runs out it is like milk or cream, and hardens very quickly. ”

“ The average dry rubber content varies with climatic conditions, position of the cut on the tree, general health of the tree, etc. On a rainy day the dry rubber content may be lowered too greatly by adventitious circumstances. ”

“ Although millions of rubber trees still stood untouched in the Brazilian forests, only those trees near the river banks could be tapped because of the impossibility of getting the rubber out of the dense vegetation. Life in the jungle was dangerous and lonely, and therefore rubber gatherers were not easy to find. ”

“ A pine which has grown under those conditions possesses a tall, straight stem, admirably fitted for masts and spars, and, at the same time, its wood is almost wholly free from knots, is regular in annular structure, soft and uniform in texture, and, consequently, superior to almost all other timber for joinery. If, while a large pine is spared, the broad-leaved or other smaller trees around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from the action of the wind mechanically produces separations between the layers of annual growth, and greatly diminishes the value of the timber. ”

“ Very rapid in growth, so much so that in the dense forest stands, when a portion of the woods has been cut down, the young saplings cannot always withstand the wind pressure and are blown down. Reaches a height in the forest of a hundred and twenty feet, but in the open is broader and more symmetrical. Too much cannot be said in praise of this tree. Its shade is dense and its autumn colouring superb. The sap yields maple syrup and sugar, and, finally, after it has done its work and is cut down, its wood yields lumber of the highest value, while the limbs make excellent firewood. ”

“ Observant, keen of vision, skilled in woodcraft though he was, the grave-faced old lumberman saw nothing in the tranquillity about him save tree trunks, and fallen, rotting remnants, and mossed hillocks, and thickets of tangled shrub. He noted the difference, not known to the general eye, between white spruce, black spruce, and fir, between grey birch and yellow birch, between withe-wood and viburnum; and he read instinctively, by the lichen growth about their edges, how many seasons had laid 6 their disfeaturing touch upon those old scars of the axe which marked the trail. ”

“ I have already alledged my reason for it; and I am told, that both oak and elm so cut, the very saplings (whereof rafters, spars, &c. are made) will continue as long as the very heart of the tree, without decay. In this work, cut your kerfe near to the ground; but have a care that it suffer not in the fall, and be ruined with its own weight: This depends upon your wood-man’s judgment in disbranching, and is a necessary caution to the felling of all other timber-trees. If any begin to doat, pick out such for the axe, and rather trust to its successor. ”

“ Of course these processes all add to the cost of lumber, yet so valuable is time that it is difficult to obtain good old-fashioned seasoned wood unless it has lain for some time in a local yard.
In order to understand the phenomena of warping, shrinkage, checking, shakes, etc., it is necessary to know something of how the tree grows. Like all living organisms, it is made up of minute cells. The new cells are formed on the outside of the tree under the bark, and here the sap is most active. ”

“ They are not made of dwarf trees. There are little woods, as well as big woods, of oak, elm, ash, pine, willow, birch, beech, and larch. In some cases the little woods are composed of the growth which shoots up when the principal trunk of the tree has been cut down, but they are generally little merely because they are young, and are cut down for use before they have time to grow into forest-trees. ”

“ The wood of the Big Tree is red and soft, coarse, light, and weak—unfit for must lumber uses. It ought, by all ordinary standards, to be counted scarcely worth the cutting; but the vast quantity yielded by a single tree pays the lumberman huge profits, though he wastes thousands of feet by blasting the mighty shaft into chunks manageable in the sawmill. Shingles, shakes, and fencing consume more of the lumber than general construction—ignoble uses for this noblest of all trees. ”

“ It seems dreadful to cut down trees which have been growing so long, yet occasionally one is made into lumber. After standing for a thousand years or more in the forest, it must seem strange to be cut into sections, loaded on flat cars, and started on a journey to some distant place to be made into ship masts or furniture or some other thing of which the tree never dreamed when it stood in its home on the slope of the Sierras. ”

“ One after another is hurled to the ground, and one after another is robbed of its branches, its crown, or a third or a fourth of the trunk is broken off from the top. Across one another, at all angles, and at different levels, thousands of these tree-corpses lie prostrate on the ground already thickly covered with piles of débris. Some rest on their roots and top-branches, others lean on the still upright stems of their neighbours, and others already lie crumbling among the fallen branches, their tops often far from their trunks, their branches scattered all around. ”

“ The tree may be a century-old gnarled trunk, too crooked and knotty to be worthy the woodman's axe, or a verdant sprout of a score of years' standing, green and lusty-the result will be the same. When the seeding year comes the brown cones will open and the winds will bear the germs of the new growth forth, spinning down the gale, whichever way they list to blow. ”

“ Trees that stand where paths are to come, or that for any reason have to be removed, root and all, are not felled with axe or saw, but are grubbed down. The earth is dug away next to the tree, gradually exposing the roots; these are cut through [161] with axe or mattock close to the butt, and again about eighteen inches away, so that by degrees a deep trench, eighteen inches wide, is excavated round the butt. A rope is fastened at the right distance up the trunk, when, if the tree does not hold by a very strong tap-root, a succession of steady pulls will bring it down ”

“ When it has grown up among other trees in the woods it is erect and tall, and when it has stood by itself in open ground it is low and broad, and almost always carries its main trunk well into the top of the tree.
The wood is heavy, tough, and hard to work, and the fibres intertwine so closely that it is very difficult to split. It is used in making the hubs of wheels and ox yokes. ”

“ The men prod the iron point into the trunk of the tree, and then catch the swinging end of the hook into the trunk. This gives them almost a handle to the tree, and the long pole furnishes them the necessary leverage. At a word from the man on the end, all give a mighty heave, and the tree is rolled over, when the remaining branches are lopped off. ”

“ The first thing I would like to know is what did you mean by ‘spiking a tree’?” asked Garry.
“I don’t know that I can explain that to you without having you near a piece of big timber to demonstrate what I mean, but I will try and tell you as best I can. There is a certain way to cut a tree, or rather there is a certain place where one always starts to cut. This place is determined by the diameter of the tree. If the tree is two feet thick, the cutter measures up two feet from the ground to start his cut. ”

“ We are satisfied that cutting or fracture of the root-leaders, especially near the bulb, when they have acquired some size, is injurious to the extension and longevity of the tree, in pines and most kinds of hard wood ”

“ Mighty trees towered upwards, branches interlacing and shutting out the sun, while down below, in the aisles of tree-trunks, stood the smaller brethren and the saplings, waiting the fall of some neighbouring giant to give them in turn room to lift their branches towards the light. ”

“ In quarter-sawed lumber, the rays have a pinkish color and glossy luster which are not pleasing. This tree belongs in the class with those which are in no danger of being extirpated by human agencies. ”

“ Impossible to draw subsistence from below, it stands up from a burned, naked, slender foundation. But another tree fell against it twenty-five or thirty feet above the ground, in some far past storm, and lost its top; this tree pours its sap into the veins of the other to support its noble top. The twin cripples have become a single healthy tree. ”

“ Consequently clean cutting may be the best system for these also under certain economic conditions.
Besides its influence upon the occurrence of species in the forest, light practically governs the physical form of the individual tree. If grown in an opening and not artificially pruned, a tree will have a conical trunk and living branches almost down to the ground. The denser and consequently darker the forest, the more cylindrical the trunk, the smaller the crown of branches and the greater the clear length. ”

“ When it is about fifteen years old the tree blossoms, and then dies. Just as it is about to blossom, it is cut down close to the ground, and stripped of its leaves. The upper part of the trunk is then taken off, so as to expose the pith of the tree, which is broken into a coarse powder by means of a club of heavy wood, having a piece of iron or sharp stone in one end. The whole inside of the tree is broken up till the trunk forms a trough not more than half an inch thick. ”

“ Perfect specimens, unhurt by running fires or lightning, are singularly regular and symmetrical in general form though not in the least conventionalized, for they show extraordinary variety in the unity and harmony of their general outline. The immensely strong, stately shafts are free of limbs for one hundred end fifty feet or so The large limbs reach out with equal boldness a every direction, showing no weather side, and no other tree has foliage so densely massed, so finely molded in outline and so perfectly subordinate to an ideal type. ”

“ In all parts of America, where this tree grows in plenty, it is employed for posts and fence-rails, as it is one of the most durable woods in existence. It is a great favourite also for kindling fires, as it catches quickly, and blazes up in a few seconds, so as to ignite the heavier logs of other timbers, such as the oak and the pine.
“Now,” said Norman, after examining a few of the cedar-trees, “we have here all that's wanted to make our canoe. We need lose no more time, but go to work at once.” ”