THE ROMANCE OF RUBBER 5 



feathers, wherewith to adorn himself on the next 

 festival occasion at the camp. 



Like all his fellows, he is an enterprising savage in 

 that he is constantly on the lookout for forest products 

 which can be turned to account in everyday life. See 

 him now stopping to try the sap of a certain tree. 

 With a flint axehead he probes the bark, when out 

 oozes a thick white fluid, some of which drops on his 

 hand. He rubs thumb against fingers to get it off, 

 whereupon it gets thicker and thicker, and finally 

 breaks loose as a bit of something solid. He experi- 

 ments with this strange gift of the forest, and finds that 

 it will stretch and rebound. He collects more of the 

 sap, catching it this time in the palm of one hand. 

 Into this liquid he drops the first little pellet he made, 

 and proceeds to roll it round and round therein with 

 his free hand. Soon the freshly collected sap begins 

 to solidify on the pellet, and his treasure grows appre- 

 ciably bigger. We watch this interesting experiment 

 repeated time after time. The pellet has grown into 

 a fair-sized ball ; suddenly that ball slips from the 

 grasp of the man who is so intelligently playing at 

 work. Surely it is bewitched ; for the moment it touches 

 the ground, it tries to jump into the air. Why, if 

 only he had known what was going to happen, if only 

 he had stooped down a second earlier, he might have 

 caught it before it again fell to earth. No wonder he 

 looks pleased ; he has discovered a new product that 

 can be made into a plaything. He notes the kind of 

 tree which has supplied him with the material for his 

 highly amusing toy ; then he picks up his blowpipe, 

 calls his parrot back to its travelling perch, and goes 

 his way. 



