210 CAOUTCHOUC AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 
It is true we find in our hot-houses the representatives of the plants which 
yield us caoutchoue, but we see them there only in a more or less stinted con- 
dition. However carefully we may rear and guard them, the animating glow 
of their native sun cannot be replaced. As the European becomes another man, 
if he does not entirely degenerate, in a tropical climate, so the character of those 
plants becomes altered in our artificial hot-houses ; they yield no caoutchoue, 
their milky juice containing only a substance which greatly resembles our 
mistletoe glue. And this proves that the burning sun of the tropics is a prin- 
cipal agent in forming caoutchouc. 
It is not exactly known who first brought elastic gum into Europe. Gener- 
ally, itis believed that it was the celebrated French savant, La Condamine, sent 
by the French Academy to South America to partake in the measuring of 
degrees of the globe. On bis return, in 1736, he is said to have spread the first 
knowledge of it. Later, in 1751, he more fully communicated his observations 
on the subject to the Academy of Paris. At that time elastic gum was still 
_ regarded as a great curiosity, to be found only in museums. The Portuguese 
were the first to introduce it, the commercial houses of Lisbon selling it under 
the name of bococho. In the far east caoutchoue was discovered by a company 
of soldiers who were compelled to cut their way with the sword through a forest 
of Prince of Wales island. They were surprised to find their blades covered 
with a glutinous substance, which proved to be caoutchouc. To Dr. Roxburgh 
we owe the first botanical description of the first East India plant, ( Urceola 
elastica,) from which caoutchoue was derived. 
For many years it was turned to no other use but the effacing of lead pencil 
marks. By degrees, however, the most important property of the hardened 
plant juice, its uncommon elasticity, became better known and usefully employed. 
In 1790 elastic bands were already manufactured; the art of softening caout- 
choue and forming it into water-tight textures had.been learned. In 1791 
Grassert made caoutchoue tubes by twisting fresh-cut pieces, in the form of a 
screw, around a thon. In'1820 Stadeler extended caoutchoue into fine threads, 
which were spun and woven into elastic textile fabrics. Later still, Mackintosh 
brought to market those water-proof fabrics which bore his name, and which, 
in a short time, made the tour of the whole civilized world, but just as rapidly 
fell into disfavor, the tightly-fitting dresses made of them proving to be incon- 
venient. Jor, in the same way as they kept off the rain, they also prevented 
the passage of the exhalations of the body, so that he who wore them for some 
time became wet even without rain. 
That people also knew how to make use of caoutchouce in a different way, 
appears from Seume’s “ Walk to Syracuse.” “Fine water,” says he at one 
place, “is one of my chief favorites, and wherever opportunity offered I ap- 
proached and drank of it. You must know that I am not so Diogenes-like in 
the matter as to drink from the palm of my hand, but that I use on my pil- 
grimage a flask of gum, which is clean, keeps well, and can be made to assume 
any shape.” And again, when speaking of the insecurity of the high roads: 
“There is little reconnoitring with me; my hammer and my gum flask will 
tempt few robbers.” But it is undoubtedly the chemists that turned the elastic 
gum to best advantage. We can say that it became indispensable to them. 
The successes achieved by that science since the end of the last century are to 
be attributed, in part, to the use of the apparently unimportant tubes, a few 
inches long, which the chemist so easily manufactures out of that gum. With 
their aid he makes gas conductors air-tight, and prepares many a complicated 
apparatus. This importance of the elastic gum is owing to the property of ad- 
hesion to each other residing in its fresh-cut surfaces. The chemist simply 
places a small piece of a thin sheet of caoutchouc in such a manner over a glass 
tube of convenient diameter that the two edges flatly overlay each other, and then 
rapidly cuts them off with a sharp pair of scissors. If the cut edges do not 
