ON THE COMMERCIAL KINDS OF INDIA-RUBBER. 17 
a new specimen, it is no difficult matter to press out a large quantity of 
water having a saline taste. When old, it changes its colour to a dull 
pink or brown, frequently the cut portions being encrusted with salt after 
the water has evaporated. It has rather an unpleasant smell. ‘This 
rubber is collected by the natives, and sold to the European traders. We 
have received it from Singapore; it may have been native, or imported 
from some of the neighbouring states. It hasa wide range, and in De 
Candolle's * Prodromus? (pt. 8, p. 358) the Malayan Archipelago, Su- 
matra, and Island of Penang, are mentioned. 
The quotations given all refer to one and the same plant, and the 
descriptions given agree well with the characteristics of the Borneo 
rubber of commerce. 
All the accounts agree in the mode of collection and treatment with 
salt-water, and before I met with these accounts I had made a note of 
the saltish taste of the water contained in it. As to the colour—an 
important consideration—Roxburgh had not the opportunity of having 
a perfectly fresh specimen ; and it is well known how soon Borneo 
rubber, especially the more porous pieces, will change colour. Men- 
tion is made also of the white colour when fresh, and of its alteration 
when exposed to the atmosphere. Roxburgh and the ‘ Singapore 
Reporter’ both refer to the “cellular” formation in this rubber. 
There is, moreover, no other description of East India rubber whic 
would at all answer to the characteristics of the caoutchouc of Urceola 
elastica. 2 
On a specimen of this plant in the British Museum, collected in 
Sumatra by Campbell, there is this note,—‘“ White Caoutchouc. 
Assam rubber is the produce of Ficus elastica, Roxb. Roxburgh 
was the first who described this tree and gave its history :— 
* Towards the close of 1810,” he says, “ Mr. Matthew Richard Smith, of 
Silhet, sent me a vessel, there called a turong, filled with honey ‘in the ve 
state in which it had been brought from the eked or Juntipoor mountains, 
north of Silhet. The vessel was a rather common or rather coarse basket, in 
the shape of a four-cornered, wide-mouthed bottle, hp of split edes. seve- 
ral species of which grow in abundance amongst the above-menti moun- 
ins, and contained about two gallons. Mr. Smith observed that the inside 
mountains. I was therefore more anxious to examin . the —€— of this lining 
than the quality of the honey. The turong was th and washed 
out, when, to my gratification, I found it very perfectly lined Mii. a thin coat 
of caoutchouc.” (Roxb. Flor. Ind. iii. 543.) 
VOL. vi. [JANUARY 1, 158.1 | 6 
