2 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



and mathematician, sailed to the tropical regions of South 

 America. La Condamine occupied his leisure in studying the 

 flora and fauna of Peru and Brazil. And in 1736 he sent a 

 small piece of rubber to the French Academy with a covering 

 note in which he said : " There grows, in the forests of the 

 province of Esmeraldas, a tree called by the natives of the 

 country ' Heve ' ; there flows from it, by simple incision, a 

 liquor, white as milk, which gradually hardens and blackens 

 in the air. The inhabitants make flambeaux of it . . . and 

 boots which do not draw water, which, after having been 

 blackened by holding them in the smoke, have all the appear- 

 ance of real leather. They coat earthen moulds in the shape 

 of a bottle with it, and, when the resin is hardened, they break 

 the mould and force out the pieces through the neck and 

 mouth ; they thus get a non-fragile bottle, capable of contain- 

 ing all kinds of liquid." La Condamine was unable further to 

 pursue his investigations, but, at his suggestion, Fresneau, 

 an engineer, stationed at Cayenne, made an exhaustive inquiry 

 into the source and preparation of rubber, the account of 

 which was communicated by La Condamine to the Academie 

 des Sciences in 1751. 



The first chemical stud}' of caoutchouc was published by 

 Herissart and Macquer in 1763, who examined the behaviour 

 of the material towards various solvents. But the substance 

 appears to have remained a mere curiosity in Europe, until 

 in 1770 Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, suggested its use, 

 under the name of India rubber, for erasing lead pencil marks. 

 And this was, for many years, the main purpose to which it 

 was devoted, although Grossart showed how to make small 

 tubes by cutting the bottles into strips, which were softened 

 in ether, or essential oil, rolled on a mandrel and allowed to 

 dry, when the surfaces amalgamated. In 1785 M. Charles, 

 who made the first ascent in a balloon filled with hydrogen, 

 coated his aerostat with rubber dissolved in turpentine. 

 Suggestions for making clothing waterproof were made by 

 Peal and Besson in 1791, Johnson in 1797, Champion in 1811, 

 and Clark in 181 5. None of these met with much success. 

 In 1820 Nadier discovered a method of cutting indiarubber 

 into thread for making elastic fabrics. And in the same year 

 Hancock founded in England the first rubber factory. But it 

 was not until about 1825 that Mackintosh discovered the 



