January i, 1902.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



111 



UTILITY OF "LATEX" TO THE RUBBER TREE. 



(|NE of the speakers at the dinner of the New England Rub- 

 ^"^ ber Club, in November, was Professor George Lincoln 

 Goodale, of Harvard University, whose remarks appear below : 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Club : The sub- 

 ject on which I have been invited to address you, namely, the 

 Milk Rearing Plants of the Tropics, touches one of the most 

 interesting and difficult problems connected with plant life. 

 That problem, briefly stated, is: Of what possible use to cer- 

 tain plants can be the milky juices which they produce ? Most 

 vegetable products have a clear and definite use to the plants 

 which yield them, but it is almost impossible to explain the 

 use to the plant of some of these milky juices. In some cases, 

 the office of the milky sap is that of protecting the plant by 

 its bitterness or its poisonous quality from unwelcome guests ; 

 but there are hundreds of species in which there is no sugges- 

 tion of a poisonous character. In fact, in one instance, the 

 milk is wholesome and so abundant that it is collected and 

 used as food. In a few rnstances, the milky juices contain a 

 considerable amount of starch and other nutriment, which 

 would lead us to think that the milk vessels serve as store- 

 houses of food for the plant. But there are many instances in 

 which this is not true. Again, some of the milks in plants 

 contain a peculiar kind of digestive ferment which serves an 

 office in digestion, in some obscure way. In one conspicuous 

 instance, this ferment is now separated and employed as a 

 remedial agent for man. There does not seem to be any one 

 explanation which covers all of the known cases. 



Now the puzzle comes just here. In the tropics, plants have 

 the fiercest struggle for existence between themselves, and sus- 

 tain a continual competition of the most strenuous sort. Every 

 species is obliged to avail itself of every advantage, however 

 slight, in its unceasing war. Now what can be the utility of 

 this store of rubber bearing milk to any herb or shrub or tree ? 

 In what way can the plant obtain from its presence in its bark, 

 even the slightest ascendancy over its fellows? 



It is well known that this fierce struggle for the mastery in 

 the tropics brings about a remarkable isolation of kinds. You 

 may find in a tropical forest or jungle, one of the plants of 

 which you are in search, and then you may have to go along 

 distance before you find another like it. It is to this striking 

 tendency to separation of sorts, that the principal difficulty in 

 collecting certain of the finer sorts of rubber is attributable. 

 Efforts of the most patient character have been made to bring 

 these better kinds of rubber bearing plants together under 

 cultivation, so that in artificial orchards the work of collection 

 could be much lightened. In the experiment stations which I 

 have seen in Ceylon and Java, experiments are now being 

 conducted to this end, and with considerable prospect of suc- 

 cess. Many of the less attractive sorts are now cultivated on 

 this continent, as you all know, with more or less success, and 

 it is the design of the experimenters in Ceylon and Java to carry 

 the investigation out on scientific and commercial lines, with 

 reference to the most promising kinds. 



There is some reason to believe that many of the sorts now 

 grown with only a limited success can be improved by careful 

 selection and by other horticultural processes. Our Harvard 

 botanic garden is just now establishing on a small scale an ex- 

 periment station in Cuba, where such studies are being con- 

 ducted. One of the first questions which confronts us there is 

 the one to which I referred in the beginning of these remarks: 

 Of what use to the rubber bearing plants, is the rubber itself ? 

 If we can get this clue, we can follow out the thread through 

 the labyrinth with greater confidence. We can then under- 



stand better the conditions under which the rubber is pro- 

 duced even in small quantities, in the plant, and we can 

 perhaps secure and improve these conditions in cultivation. 



If we remember that a seashore weed, the sugar beet, has 

 been led along the lines of selection and intelligent cuiti /ation, 

 until it forms a strong rival to the sugar cane, we can believe 

 that some one of the smaller rubber plants with a short cycle of 

 existence, may perhaps be led along similar lines, until its 

 yield of milky juice would be distinctly profitable. In these 

 experiments and in the work of our Harvard botanical museum, 

 we have the hearty cooperation not only of our foreign cor- 

 respondents but of our efficient department of agriculture of 

 the United States. I know that we shall have your interest 

 also in this phase of our work. 



IS THERE BALATA IN BRAZIL.? 



A LETTER comes to The India Rubber World from a 

 •^* gentleman in Pari, Brazil, who describes himself as the 

 owner of an estate on the line of the railway extending from 

 Para to Barganra, on which has been discovered " Gutta-percha 

 or Balata." He is under the impression that the tree is the 

 Mimusops balata — the species which yields the Balata of com- 

 merce in Venezuela and the Guianas. Our correspondent is 

 engaged in forming a company in Para for exploiting the new 

 product, and has forwarded samples of the gum to the United 

 States, in order to have a valuation placed upon the same. 



From time to time for years past reports have reached The 

 India Rubber World of the existence of Gutta-percha in the 

 Amazon valley, but it is not until now that samples have been 

 available. Without stopping to question our correspondent's 

 conclusions as to the botanical source of his samples, it is well 

 to note that the product is radically different from any Balata 

 now on the market. It is about the color of Balata, but it is 

 not nearly as tough. In fact, it is quite brittle, and in value 

 would be about half way between Balata and Almeidina — say 

 20 cents a pound. 



THE PROPERTIES OF FRENCH TALC. 



A WESTERN newspaper recently gave considerable space 

 to a description of the sufferings of beginners in cer- 

 tain factories from the flying fragments of powder used in pre- 

 venting the raw gum from sticking to itself. The writer de- 

 scribed the sufferer as being conscious of a burning, smarting 

 sensation in the eyes, which were inflamed and watery and re- 

 mained so, even after he had left the factory at night. He 

 added, however, that after six months in the factory the flying 

 powder was no longer noticed, and that eyes, ears, and noses 

 might be filled with it without discomfort. The writer evi- 

 dently referred to the use of French talc in rubber work, doubt- 

 less in thedepartment of druggists' sundries. Where he got 

 his idea, however, that it was particularly troublesome to the 

 workmen it is difficult to understand. As a matter of fact, the 

 powder is about as innocuous as air, and the men who work in 

 it year in and year out are apparently the pictures of health and 

 content. The real complaint against French talc comes from the 

 manufacturers who suffer because it settles on cemented sur- 

 faces, and, flying everywhere, coats with its brownish whiteness 

 goods that should be jet black, bright vermillion, or some other 

 clear color. If the workmen, and the writer of the article above 

 mentioned, are seriously concerned about the matter, let them 

 set their wits to work to find a cheap method to dispense with 

 it. They could thus save their eyes and line their pockets, for 

 there is ready market for such an invention. 



