Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/701

Rh As a result of this practice collectors have to go farther and farther inland for a supply, so that it often does not pay to transport it to the coast. There is a vast need of better management in collecting and curing the gum, as the African product is of lower grade and brings less than many other sorts in the London market. It seems a certain source of wealth, and is easy of cultivation, so proper steps are almost sure to be taken for its encouragement by the nations engaged in civilizing the continent. Traffic in India rubber is one great incentive for the building of the Congo Railroad.

Asia was the second country to furnish Europe with India rubber. The supply has of late years decreased in importance in consequence of the destruction of the trees. American varieties have been introduced with some success by the Indian Government. The principal native trees are the Urceola elastica, the Ficus elastica (the well-known window plant) and a species of fig, the Ficus religiosa, which is one of the most beautiful trees in the world. Its branches bend down, take root, and form new trunks. The great fig of Narbuddah has three hundred and fifty large and three thousand medium-sized stems, thus constituting in itself a veritable forest. The principal rubbers from India are the Assam and Rangoon. India rubber is also obtained in Oceania, notably in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, but very little comes from Australia. It was formerly thought that the rubber tree only grew in moist ground, under tropical suns, but explorers have found them in hard soils on high plateaus. A beginning is being made with cultivation of the trees. The Indian Government has a nursery of Pará trees in Assam extending over two hundred square miles, and has shown that they may be productively raised from foreign seed with little care. The cultivation is also attracting attention in Central America and Mexico. According to estimates, it is very profitable. The long waiting of fifteen to twenty years, however, till the tree attains its full vigor, is apt to make individual capital cautious.

France was the cradle of the rubber industry, and French researches permitted the anticipation of many applications of the substance afterward carried out by the English and Americans. La Condamine, who was with the expedition sent to the equator by the French Academy, found the novel article at Quito, where it was known as caoutchouc (from cahuchu of the Maïnas Indians), and sent the first accurate knowledge of it to Europe in 1736. The natives called it hhévé (hence hevea). The Omaguas made water bottles of it, provided with a cannula, which were presented to guests before the repast. They were primitive syringes, and gave the name to the tree in some localities. Hérissant and Macquer, in France, soon attracted attention to the gum by their