10 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW, to FOREIGN OFFICE 
Royal Gardens, Kew, 
SIR, May 23, 1899. 
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your 
letter of May 17, transmitting a copy of Consul Churchill’s report 
on a kind of India-rubber exported from Peru, through Pará, 
pee the name of Caucho. 
2. Caucho, of which Caoutchouc is probably an expanded form, 
has been hitherto identified with “ India-rubber ” par excellence, 
the produce of one or more species of Hevea indigenous to the 
basin of the Amazons, and exported from Pará. According to 
Castilloa. One or more species of this genus produces the india- 
rubber of Central America. In South America Castilloa has been 
known to extend as far as Ecuador, where it is called Jebe, other- 
wise Jeve or Heve. According to Aublet this latter name was 
given in Northern Ecuador to a species of Hevea, and in founding 
that genus he derived its name poco y. In the pore 
basin the name for the species of Hevea Moca ae and in 
Central America for those of Castilloa * Ule " or “Tunu” (see 
Kew Bulletin, 1898, pp. 141, 142). Perhaps in P abor South 
America the names Caucho and Jebe are applied indiscriminately 
to rubber-producing tree 
3. According to a bri by Mr. D. B. Adamson, H.B.M. Consul 
at Iquitos, dated December 24, 1898, and published in the Trans- 
actions of the Liverpool Geographical Society for the same year, 
eru has two kinds of rubber-producing trees: Caucho, which 
rer to SPORE." e A ag and Jebe to Hevea (pp. 39-40). 
Both Mr. Adam d Mr. Churchill agree that the rubber is 
extracted from ihe es cho tree by felling. "The Jebe is always 
. tapped. the former process ier n a VS t „being * worked 
.' In consequence, accordin r. Adam * many of the 
f Oaah" [or rubber c distent à are working on Brazilian 
rivers, where the supply is yet more plentiful." 
4. It is not, however, necessary Li fell the Castilloa trees to 
collect the rubber. The method of tapping s minutely described 
in a report by the United States Consul-General Beaupré, published 
in the United States Consular Reports for May, at pp. 147-151. 
The estimated yield per tree is mach s maller that given in 
Sir Henry De inek. report, as to which I a some 
enquiries to the Foreign Öffice in Hed letter of April 14, 1897. 
I am, Sir, 
Your ei Servant, 
The Under Secretary er State AU. THISELTON-DYER. 
for sh nm Affair 
Foreign Office, Downing Street, S.W. 
EXTRACT from Report by Consul D. B. Adamson in Transactions 
Liverpool Geographical Sociely, 1898, pp. 39-40. 
“As you are aware, rubber is the chief article of export, and 
hitherto has been practically the only one of any importance. Its 
extraction from the trees and preparation e the market is 
