GuTTA Pebcha. — Great interest naturally attaches to a plant furnishing an important 

 material like gutta percha, which has been found to be adapted to so many useful pui-poses. 

 The concrete juice of the tree was known in Europe and America before the tree which pro- 

 duced it was described. Mr. William Lobb, the indefatigable collector, had the honor of 

 first forwarding dried specimens, from which it obtained a name and station in systematic 

 botany ; the name is Isonandra Gutta, of the natural order Sapotaceae. 



It is a large tree, attaining a height of 40 feet, and sometimes a diameter of 3 or 4 feet. 

 Tlie leaves are alternate on the branches, somewhat leathery in texture, and obovate, entire 

 in outline, attenuated at the base into the largish petiole, by which they are attached ; they 

 are green on the upper side, and orange shining beneath. The flowers are small, each singly 

 stalked, more or less drooping, and growing in fasciles from the axils of the leaves ; they are 

 subrotate, with a short tube and six ovate or spreading lobes ; twelve prominent stamens are 

 attached round the mouth of the tube. Tlie fruit is egg-shaped, each cell with one ovule. 

 It is a native of Singapore, Borneo, and other Malay islands ; its timber is of no value, the 

 wood being soft, fibrous and spongy, pale colored, and traversed by longitudinal recei^tacles 

 or reservoirs, filled with the gum, forming ebony-black lines. From the fruit is obtained 

 a concrete and edible oil, which is used by the natives with their food. The tree is not 

 hardy, and its beauty is scarcely sufficient even to introduce it into our hot-houses, except as 

 a curiosity. 



Of the various uses to which gutta percha is already applied, the following lines, written 

 by a visitor to the great manufactory in London, will convey an idea, though he has by no 

 means exhausted the catalogue : — 



1. Tlio gutta percha trees are tapped and they then 

 die. 



2. Usedjabove and below ground. 



1. "My Parent died when I leap'd from her side 



To fill mankind with wonder, 



2. And now I abound, in the wide world around, 



The green sward above and under. 



3. I hold the flower in the sunny bower; 



4. I shelter the dead in their graves. 



5. I circle the hair of the maiden fair; 



3. Flower-pots. 



4. Lining for coiDns. 



5. Bonnet-caps. 



