In Mexico and Central America, the name of Ule still 
denotes even to-day one of the rubber trees known as_ the 
elastic Castille. 
After the Spaniards, the French in 1736 occupied themselves 
with that substance, whose interesting properties had not up 
to that date come to deserve the attenion of the Europeans. 
De la Condamine sent by the French Government to Pert, 
in order to measure a degree of the terrestrial meridian, was 
the first to refer to the Hevéa of the Guyana. In a note that 
accompanied a small sample of resinous gum of a heavy dark 
color, almost black, he said to the Academy of Sciences: “There 
grows in the forests of the province of the Esmeraldas a tree 
known to the natives by the name of Hevé; a white resinous 
liquid something like milk runs out from it after making an 
incision; this substance is collected in a leaf that is laid close 
to the foot of the tree and afterwards is exposed to the sun, 
when it gets black at first upon its surface and afterwards by 
continuous exposure to the sun becomes black in all its mass. 
Torches, which burn admirably well, are made from it. It is 
known in Quito, that that tree grows also upon the banks of the 
Amazon and that the Mainas call it cautchi. They make 
earthen moulds in the form of bottles and cover them with that 
material. Afterwards when the resin gets hard, they break the 
mould and thereby obtain unbreakable water-jars much lighter 
than glass bottles.” 
Later on he wrote: “many are the uses which the Omaguas 
make of that resin in the central parts of South America, 
especially among the Indians of Para where the Portuguese 
gave to the tree that produces it, the name of Pauseringa, be- 
cause from it ‘seringas,’ much in vogue among the Omaguas, 
are manufactured ; these being little hollow balloons in the shape 
of a pear, into which a tube is inserted. 
“In Para it is moulded in still many different manners, they 
make borracha, faces of animals, hollow or solid balls and also 
apply it in the manufacture of boots which become quite water- 
proof and when smoked acquire the appearance of leather.” 
Fresneau, a collaborator of de la Condamine, sought to 
study the vegetable plants which produced that gum, obtaining 
as a result that Aublet, a French botanist, proceeded to interest 
himself in the question afd completed de la Condamine’s 
studies, and then classifying the hevé under the domination of 
Hevea Guyanensis. 
It was only in 1798 that the Ficus elastica, the first Asiatic 
plant producer of rubber became known, and up till 1860 South 
America, English India and Java were the only rubber-produc- 
ing countries in the world. 
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