THE INDIA-RUBBER OF THE AMAZON. 195 
employed in extracting rubber from the same trees as I had taken the 
flowers. 
Near the Barra, some milk is taken from a Siphonia common on the 
viver-banks (S. elastica, Aubl.?); but there is another species growing 
in the interior of the forest said to yield more milk. I have not seen 
it, and cannot say whether it is a species known to me. 
The Siphonia most frequent about the mouths of the Tapajoz and 
Madeira seems to be S. Spruceana, Benth., but there are, no doubt, other 
species. 
I have gathered, in all, some seven or eight species of Siphonia on 
the Amazon and Rio Negro, but it is probable that two or three times 
as many still remain to be discovered. 
On the Uaupés, I met with two trees* of a genus apparently far re- 
moved from Sipkonia,— possibly they are Sapotacee, for I did not analyse 
the flower, (Micrandra, Benth. in Journ. of Bot. vi. 371,)—which yield 
pure rubber, and are also called by the Indians Xeringue; but the clus- 
tered trunks (often as many as ten from a root) and the simple (not 
ternate) leaves, give these trees an aspect very different from that of 
the Siphonia. 
There are doubtless several other trees in the valley of the Amazon 
which yield rubber, but in many cases mixed with resin, which we have 
not here the means of separating. Such are a great many Figs and 
Artocarps, two families which abound towards the head-waters of the 
Rio Negro and Orinoco. On the Casiquiare, the Indians make white 
shirts of the bark of an epiphytal Fig, which they call ** marima blanca," 
the milk of which is said to be very copious, and when dry elastic. 
Towards the upper mouth of the Casiquiare I saw several trees of 
marima blanca, but they were perched high up on other trees, and had 
no flowers or fruit. Those who have herborized among mosquitos, 
ants, and wasps, will understand why I did not trouble myself to gather 
only a sterile branch. s 
In descending the Casiquiare, in January, 1853, I reached one even- - 
ing a small village some distance above the outlet of Lake Vasiva—one 
one of those pueblos which spring up on the banks of the Rio Negro 
and Casiquiare, endure barely a generation, and then disappear—where 
I found nearly the whole population (Indians of the tribe Pacimonare) 
amusing themselves by a sort of football. Their balls seemed to be 
* No. 2427 and 2479 to Bentham. 
* 
