176 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Caribs formerly made trumpets with which they called the people 

 to war and to religious ceremonies. Now water conduits and 

 gutters are made of it. The wood is light and soft. By brisk 

 rubbiug, with the aid of a pointed piece of hard wood sunk in its 

 tissues and caused to rotate rapidly by means of a cord or strap, fire is 

 produced, and other species of the same genus, ambaiba, 1 are used 

 by the natives of Brazil for the same purpose. The wood of the 

 root is generally preferred to that of the stem. The young branches 

 of many species furnish a fibre of which very stout fabrics are 

 woven and made into hammocks and vestments. But the most 

 useful industrial product of the Artocarpcœ is probably the caout- 

 chouc extracted from their latex. All the caoutchouc gathered in 

 southern Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, San-Salvador, 

 Costa-Rica, Guatemala, the Antilles, Columbia, Equador and Peru, 

 that is to say, in the west of America between 25° N. lat. and about 

 25° S. lat. is the product almost exclusively of Castilloa elastica? 

 (fig. 122). In Nicaragua the juice is collected at all seasons, but 

 not so much in the rainy, when it is much less abundant.' Incisions 

 are made in the trunk in two different modes. Sometimes a long 

 vertical cut is made intersected by oblique ones ; sometimes, as in 

 Nicaragua, the incision is in the form of a continuous spiral, with 

 an inclination to the horizon of 45 9 ; and if the tree is large, another 

 spiral incision is made in a contrary direction to the former ; but 

 this double incision is very injurious to the plant. An iron gutter 

 placed at the foot of the tree conducts the juice to buckets of the 

 same metal, and in the evening it is strained ; after this, it is treated 



1 Pison (Bras. ed. 1748, 72) and Makc- leaves, which M. Levy has reported from Ni- 

 graff (ibid., 91) have designated under the caragua, and of which M. Collins speaks, can- 

 name of Ambaiba and Ambauva several species not be distinguished specifically from C. elastica 

 of Cecropia. The ashes are used to clarify mo- (he. cit. 12, t. 3). Does the new species es- 

 tasses in the manufacture of sugar. The fruit tablished by the same author under the name 

 is edible. The savages of [Brazil hold with of C. Markhamiana, and which should also give 

 the foot the piece of Ambaiba root in which caoutchouc, belong really to the same genus ? 

 they make the pointed stick of hard wood rotate 3 In April the yield is 60 per cent, better 

 rapidly, and provide themselves with dried leaves than in October, the rainy season. A tree 18 

 or bits of cotton as tinder. inches in diameter may give in April, a maxi- 



■ Cervantes, Suppl. à la Gaxet. de Lilernt. mum of 20 gallons of milk, from which is 



Mexico, 2 Jul. 1794 (Castillo). — Trfx. Ann. Sc. extracted 50 lbs. of caoutchouc. The single 



Nat. sér. 3, viii. 136, t. 5, fig. 142-148. — Col- district of S. -Juan, in Nicaragua, has produoed 



lins, Rep. on Caoutch, (1872), 11, t. 2 (U/é, in one year 10,000 cwts. of caoutchouc (Collins, 



Hulé, Ulé-nlé, VU. Jebc, Tassa). Castilloa, a he. eit. 15, 16), collected by fiOO Imleros. 

 little different from the type in the form of its 



