Two thousand nurslings were thus transplanted to the Spice Isle, lesser quantities going to Java, British Burma, Singapore and other points which appeared to offer the needed conditions for healthy growth. It was in Ceylon that the first young rubbers flowered in the year 1881; there is no earlier record of the blossoming of _heveas_ outside their habitat in the Amazonian valleys. The resulting seeds were used to create new plantations, but the whole thing was still in a purely experimental stage; time proved that many saplings were planted under incorrect conditions, but the planters had nothing but theory as their guide; they cleared land—at great expense—kept it clean while the young plants grew, and waited; they did not know if the _heveas_ would live, or that, living, they would produce latex coagulating into commercial rubber. Nor did the Amazon rubber dealers know it or believe it. When tales of Wickham’s enterprise came to Brazil a law was passed forbidding the export of rubber seeds, but this locking of the stable door after the loss of the steed was of no more avail than the subsequent measures promulgated to prevent export of the uricury nuts used for smoking the latex. That the Amazonian industry could be duplicated in the East was not seriously credited. The thing was impossible! The plants would die; or if they did not die they would not yield latex; if they yielded latex it would coagulate into such wretched rubber that no market would accept it. Disease, blight, drought, would ruin the presumptuous plantations— something, in fact, must happen to prevent such an incredible, absurd event as rivalry between the famous and unique “black gold” of the Amazon and a plantation stepchild. The few people who spoke out about the danger were ignored. While unbelievers still protested the deluge of plantation rubber began. In 1900, 4 tons of crude rubber were exported from the East; in 1905, 145 tons; in 1910, over 8,000 tons; in 1912, over 28,000 tons; in 1914, well over 71,000 tons; in 1915, nearly 107,000 tons. The output for 1916 is variously reckoned at 140,000 and 160,000 tons, from an area totalling about 1,350,000 acres in Ceylon, Malaysia, Dutch East Indies, India and Borneo.