For quite a long time rubber-growing was generally looked upon as a new hobby for botanists, and anyone who prophesied a commercial future for plantation rubber was dubbed a crank. Meanwhile, enthusiasts on the staff of the Botanic Gardens in Ceylon and Malaya continued to ride their hobby-horse, in that they devoted earnest attention to the new specimens that had been placed under their care. As soon as possible they began to take cuttings from the Hevea trees, and in 1878 no less than five hundred rooted plants were sent from Ceylon to British Burma and Madras. Then came the time when the trees began to furnish a good supply of seeds. By 1886, both Ceylon and Malaya were in a position to begin distributing seeds among other countries that wanted to experiment in rubber cultivation, and in the course of the next few years supplies were sent to Queensland, Java, Fiji, Borneo, East Africa, and Jamaica. But in most cases the packages went to botanists--with an odd exception or two, planters and business men in general would have nothing to do with rubber cultivation. Presently, the planters in the Malay Peninsula found themselves in a very desperate position. They had been growing coffee, and doing splendidly with the crop, but conditions now conspired to cut down their profits to such an extent that their only chance of not being utterly ruined was to give up competing in the coffee market. In despair they began to plant Hevea. This change only took place as recently as 1895. And still the planters of Ceylon could afford to laugh at the idea of anyone trying to make money out of rubber-growing--they were doing well with their tea. The pioneers in Malaya had a very hard struggle to keep their heads above water whilst their rubber-trees were growing. They had to wait five years before they could begin tapping, and few indeed were the people with sufficient faith in what the harvest would be to advance them any money for working expenses. Came the day when motor-cars got so far beyond being a fashionable craze that people began to realize they would soon be a necessary means of locomotion in this age when everyone is in such a hurry. Rubber tyres were going to be so much used in the near future, said someone to somebody else, that it looked as if we should want more rubber than was being supplied from the forests. The idea spread, and by 1898 a few more people had become enthusiastic about rubber cultivation--larger areas were put under Hevea in Malaya, and rubber planting was begun in Ceylon, even though tea-growing was paying so well. By 1899 it had been proved that Hevea trees would yield marketable rubber; in this year the first cultivated Para rubber, prepared from the trees planted in Perak, was sold in the London market at 3s. 10d. per pound.