36 Timehri. . 
disposed to regard the Pomeroon touck-pong, as quite distinct, and possibly 
new to science. However, the touck-pong belongs to the great order Euphorbi- 
acae—spurge worts,—not to Moreae, to which I conjectured, from a sight of 
leaves alone,in my former report that it might belong. In that report I mentioned 
cumakaballi as the Arawak name for this tree ; but from recent investigation 
I feel some uncertainty as to whether the touck-pong is really included with the 
several plants to which I find that name is applied both on the Pomeroon and 
Essequibo rivers. J am rather disposed to believe that it is not, from the fact, 
ascertained by Mr. im Thurn, that on the Pomeroon, the Carabisi Indians ascribe 
several plants, all, or nearly all, of which, are figs, to cumakaballi, while for 
Sapium biglandulosum or whatever it may prove to be, they use the term touck- 
pong specially. The Arawak Indians of that region call the latter hya-hya, but 
this further confuses the matter, as that is the Indian name of the cow-tree— 
Tabernaemontana utilis—which is quite a different thing and has no gum in its 
copious milk, Cumakaballi seems to be used in a generic sense to embrace, at 
least, all the larger growing species of fig trees, but apparently not the touck- 
pong.” Some of the trees seen by Mr. Jenman on the Canje were seventy to 
eighty feet in height and three to four feet in diameter, and they were “in an 
advanced state of decay from over-tapping ”’ and all the trees he came across had 
been tapped. It would pay exporters, Mr. Jenman said in effect, to keep the 
milk separate from balata, instead of selling it mixed with this product, when 
naturally it could not possibly be recognised by purchasers in England as a new 
and distinct rubber. 
Mr. Jenman sent home a sample of Sapium rubber somewhere in 1884 or 1885, 
and it was “‘ very favourably spoken of as to quality, and estimated as worth 
from 2s. 3d. to 2s. 6d. pertb., which is the highest estimated value that has been 
given by experts for any of the substances, balata or india rubber, produced 
by this colony.” 
It will be seen that quite an excellent opinion was formed on this sample, but 
it must also be noted that Mr. Jenman confesses in his report that he did not see 
the trees tapped himself, consequently we may safely presume that subsequent 
specimens of sapium rubber were obtained by Indians or others who, like the 
balata-bleeder of whom Mr. Jenman wrote, simply mixed the milk of many of the 
various cumakaballi figs which were found ready to hand with the latex yielded 
by S. Jenmani, which, as Mr. Jenman pointed out, was by no means “ gregarious 
but grows dispersed, a tree here and there.” The value of the Sapium rubber 
soon was depreciated, for we find Monsieur Henri Jumelle—Professor adjoint 
a la Faculté des Sciences, writing as follows on this large genus of the great 
Euphorbia family. 
“ Sapium Jenmani of British Guiana (the toukpong of the Caribs and one of 
‘he hya-hya of the Arawaks) discovered by Jenman in the alluvial forests of the 
Pomeroon, gives a useless product, depreciated by the quantity of resin which 
it contains.”’ In a report on Mr. David Young’s estate on the Aruka river, in the 
North Western District, which I furnished to this Government in February, 1906, 
and which was published in the Official Gazette of May, appears the following : 
“ But can we be certain that in asking the Indians for rubber (toukpong or Hya- 
hya) Mr, Jenman really received the juices obtained from these sapiwms ? It is 
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