23° ACCOUNT OF THE ULE-TREE 



the elastic gum, or Vie of the Mexicans, it will not 

 be foreign to my purpose to say something of 

 several other South and North American veo;e- 

 tables, which likewise yield this substance. 



The Jatropha elastica of the younger Linnaeus* 

 (called Pao-Siringa by the Portuguese of Brazil ; 

 Jeve by the inhabitants of the province of 

 Esmeraldas, and Caoutchor by the Mainas-Indians, 

 inhabiting the borders of the Amazone river) pro- 

 duces the elastic gum in so great abundance, that 

 several travellers have been inclined to believe, 

 this tree provided all Europe with it. The 

 hotter parts of the kingdom of Mexico pro- 

 duce several species of the fame genus, such as 



* This is the plant of which Abbl b t has given a figure in his Planter 

 d: la Guiane franqoise, under the name of Hevea. As this author has not 

 represented the flower, which he never saw, but only the fruit, the 

 youngerLi n r: jt. u s was induced, from the general appearance ofthelatter, 

 to refer this plant to Jatropha ; a genus, into which, indeed, many plants 

 of the order of Euphorbias have been thrown, that cannat be properly 

 faid to belong to it. Richard, who had an opportunity of examining 

 the flowers of the Hevea, in Cayenne, afterwards communicated the de- 

 scription of the sexual parts, together with a representation, in the 

 "Journal it Physique, Vol. 27. p. 138, from which Schreber established 

 the generic character of his Siphpnia; a name corresponding with that of 

 Pat-Siringa or siringe-wood of the Portuguese, and given to it, because 

 the natives of Brazil, among other commodities, fabricate fyringes of 

 the fub'stance yielded by this tree. T. 



