8 RUBBER 



hang decorations of feathers and seeds when they are 

 merrymaking. 



From the way these primitive folk set about getting 

 a supply of the newly discovered product, we soon 

 realize that they have more intelligence than we had 

 previously given the savage credit for possessing ; for 

 when the discoverer points out to his companions a speci- 

 men of the tree which yields the desired gum, a member 

 of the party proceeds to carry out an experiment that 

 would seem to be of both a practical and imaginative 

 nature. A hole is scratched in the ground at the base 

 of the tree, and a few inches above, in a straight line 

 with this, several notches are hacked in the trunk. 

 The sap, which immediately begins to ooze out, 

 trickles down into the hollow beneath. You see at once 

 that a more wholesale method of collecting has been de- 

 vised than that of catching driblets of the sap by hand. 

 But in the plan which is now being tried there lurks still 

 more intelligence, inspiration, reason, instinct, or what- 

 ever you like to call it. For at the conclave in the 

 camp, general opinion favoured the idea that heat was 

 the agent which transformed the liquid into a solid. 

 And if the warmth of a man's hand could bring about 

 such a remarkable change, surely, it is argued, the 

 heat of the sun would more readily have the same 

 effect. So the sap is now to be left in the collecting 

 hole, where it will come under the influence of baking 

 hot tropical earth and thirsty tropical air. 



Sap is still issuing from the wounded trunk when 

 the party go off in search of other specimens of the tree. 

 After a few hours, we find that they have been steering 

 a course which brings them back to the first tree on 

 which they operated. No wonder they are all so 



