THE GUAYULE 



.*5 



camped, finding traces of earlier 

 travelers in arrow-points, beads 

 and old-fashioned army copper 

 cartridge shells. On the sur- 

 rounding slopes the guaynle 

 grows, and probably here Bigelow 

 in 1852 found the specimen on 

 which the description published 

 by Asa Gray in 1859 was based. 

 For a good many years that 

 specimen (Fig. 3) lay in the 



Fig. 3. The Specimen of the 

 guatule on which asa gray based 



HIS ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION. After a 



photograph. 



Fig. 2. A large Guayule Plant, prob- 

 ably 50 years old. The measure is one 

 meter. 



Gray Herbarium awaiting its apothe- 

 osis. So little was the plant known 

 till recent years that even Bray does 

 not mention it in his description of 

 the vegetation of western Texas, writ- 

 ten in 1906. 



In fact, it was less than a year 

 and a half previous to this date that, 

 as the result of the efforts of Mr. 

 William A. Lawrence, backed by 

 American capital, it Avas for the first 

 time demonstrated that it was possible 

 to extract the rubber from the guay- 

 ule by a mechanical process. On 

 December 25, 1904, 50 pounds of 

 crude guayule rubber were shipped to 

 and sold in Xew York city. This 

 was the beginning of the immense 

 operations of the Continental-Mex- 

 ican Rubber Co. at Torreon, Coa- 

 liuila. 



