158 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
in England, and different eminent manufacturers in France and Ger- 
many, have declared that the kind of Gum elastic forwarded for their 
examination from Labuan and the north-west coast of Borneo, was of 
very much greater value for the purpose of making waterproof fabries 
than any other variety of caoutchouc. 
This gum, the produce of creepers known in that part of Borneo 
under the names of Serapit, Petaboo, and Menungan, is nothing else 
than the watery, milk-like sap of these creepers, which by a simple 
process, in the addition of a little salt water, takes the consistency and 
all the peculiarities of real India-rubber, being at first snow-white, but 
by exposure to the air changing slowly to a dirty yellow, and after- 
wards brown colour. The Serapit produces the most common, the 
Petaboo the best, the Menungan the greatest quantity of, sap. The 
gum obtained in this way contains water, enclosed in small cavities, 
which we believe to have been formed by the celerity with which the 
sap hardens, preventing thereby the salt water and perhaps the watery 
part of the sap from finding an issue. * * * 
During our peregrinations in the jungle of Singapore, we have met 
with the identical creeper, called Menungan in Borneo, but which the 
Malays here call Ngerit or Ngret, and on inquiry have heard from na- 
tive woodeutters that the same is found in great quantities in Johore 
and the neighbouring islands. We therefore believe that this discovery 
is well worth the trouble and the expense of an experiment on a limited 
scale, the gum having been sold here from 8 to 11 dollars the picul. 
The process for obtaining the sap in use by the Badjows and Muruts 
is very simple; but we should like to see an attempt made to obtain it 
in a manner less destructive to the plant. These people cut the creeper 
into small pieces of one foot to eighteen inches in length, allow the 
sap to flow into their jars or buckets, and put one end of the piece 
over a slow fire, whenever the sap does not flow quickly enough. ‘They 
therefore destroy the plant in order to obtain the juice. 
This creeper could also form a new branch of agriculture, for it 
grows fast enough to procure a supply of the sap in less than three 
years, and after planting requires no further cultivation.  - 
[We heartily wish our friends at Singapore, as well as in Borneo, 
would send dried flowering specimens of these and other useful plants 
to the botanists in Europe, that their scientific names may be deter- 
mined.—Ep.] 
