249 
of smoke-cured Para. The following graphie account of the 
preparation of Para rubber is taken from Wells’ * Voice of 
Urbano" (London: Allen, 1888) :— 
* Master and men then departed to Pic dna out-buildings, where 
the Indian boys and eae after partaking of a very hasty and 
M pans of dried piraurucu (a large river fish) and farinha, 
set to work at eoi veis the milk, or sap of the rubber tree, 
[ES indi APO er. 
“This process does not require any great manual labour; it is 
rather a work of patience. In a distant nd of the yard, under 
the shade of one of the few remaining — a MITES of the 
fruit of the Urucuri palm was burning on ral fires The 
properties of which has proved to be the Loe efficacious for 
er Near 
one of the large earthenware pots was placed Det vost a couple o 
Indian boys, each boy having a small, round-blade d paddle in his 
wood, is he 
rapidly coagulated and turned almost at once to the black india- 
rubber of commerce. The round blade of the paddle, ga 
with a thin coating of rubber, is then again dipped into the pot 
the outer circumference of the paddle, when the round cake o 
ground alongside the operator. So the process is posses until 
the collected sap is exhausted and the rubber stored aw 
arly the next morning, the Indians will again go neas in the 
canoes to the forest, there to empty out the contents of the tins 
that have been previously left adhering to the rubber trees by a 
dab of clay below a gash in the bark, whence the milk slowl 
Ignacio's men, all the sap that it was possible to obtain was take 
from every tree (pp. 119-120). 
In the Museum No. 1 at Kew there is shown (in case 93 on the 
ground floor) a complete series of specimens illustrative of the 
Para rubber indus 
the early stages, when the rubber was exported in small 
quantities, it appeared in the form of shoes or the grotesque form 
of animals; the better qualities came in the form of bottles 
miere over soft clay, which was afterwards washed out br 
bove 
classed, according to the localities in 
which iti is próQtidéd, as ** Islands " ‘atid * Up-river," or as * hard- 
cured” and “soft-cured.” The medium pier are called 
entrefine, in which there are occasionally some streaks of white 
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