BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 33 
Gurra PERCHA. 
This is a vegetable substance, which though only 
known to Europeans for a few years, is now extensively 
used in the arts for various purposes, as a substitute 
for Caoutchouc, because it has the valuable property of 
dissolving without being volcanized. But while thus fre- 
quently employed, and constituting an important article of 
commerce, the plant which produces it was unknown, until, 
by a lucky accident, during the residence of Mr. Thos. 
Lobb in Singapore, where be has been (and in other Malay 
islands) employed in a botanical mission by Mr. Veitch of 
Exeter, he detected this plant and sent home numerous 
specimens, which prove it to be a new sapotaceous Plant, 
of which a figure and description will shortly appear in 
this Journal, under the name of Bassia? Hook. Accom- 
panying numerous well dried specimens,* (though unfor- 
tunately without corollas), Mr. Lobb judiciously sent small 
sections of the wood, which is peculiarly soft, fibrous and 
spongy, pale-coloured, and traversed by longitudinal re- 
ceptacles or reservoirs, filled with the gum, forming ebony: 
black lines, | 
It appears that a Pie Dr. Montgomerie, was. the 
person who first brought the Gutta Percha into public notice. 
He writes thus, in the Magazine of Science, 1845, “I may 
not claim the actual piscovery of Gutta Percha, for though 
quite unknown to Europeans, a few inhabitants of certain 
parts of the Malayan forests were acquainted with it. Many, | 
however, of their neighbours, residing in the adjacent native — 2 
villages, had never heard of it; and the use to which it —— 
was applied was very iin for I could only. m ascertain that "s 
vol. 5 of this Journal, and of which the catalogue of names was pt lis 
at p. 246 of the same volume. - Tamen dd qe rthcomii 
exo pen in fe gren Tua 
v VOL. vi. s : 
