The rubber-producing trees (seringaes) of the Amazon are exploited by the natives, whose number is but small, and by the immigrants from the eastern States who, fleeing from the droughts which periodically befall those States and attracted by the liberal profits offered by the extraction of rubber, go there in thousands every year. This current of immigration is, however, insufficient; a proper remedy for such a state of things would perhaps be foreign labour which still keeps back from the North because it only knows it through garbled information. The bad food and the indifference for all that concerns health conditions, contribute every year to the invaliding of a considerable number of men. The extraction of India rubber being the occupation which pays best in the Amazon Valley, the pastoral industry, cattle-breeding and farming are altogether despised, so that all the articles of subsistence needed by the population, either come from the South of Brazil, burdened by cost of a long transport, or from abroad overloaded with high Brazilian Customs duties. The heavy transport tariffs are due to the numerous difficulties of all sorts that thwart navigation in the affluents and sub-affluents of the Amazon river and to the greediness of ship-owners, encouraged by the absence of competition. On the other hand, the existence of a complete river system has made the Brazilian Governments disregard the necessity of establishing railways which, by shortening distances, might bind the different affluents of the great river to each other. Finally, the excessive taxation imposed by the States of Amazonas and Pará on its almost only product of exportation is a consequence of the special conditions of life in that Brazilian region, which conditions we have just described. The Governmental and administrative system requires large sums for its maintenance, is unable to avail itself of any other sources of income because they hardly exist. The legislator has had to go on taxing the great product more and more. In order to cheapen the product, besides removing the causes which have just been shown, two other far-reaching measures have been suggested; the adoption of a process for coagulation of the latex which might decrease the production of inferior rubbers, and planting on a big scale.