MANY OR SPECIAL PURPOSES 353 



dark substance, that bounded high when it struck 

 the ground. It was natural for the strangers to 

 examine the ball, and try to find out what it was 

 made of. The Indians called it by a name that 

 sounded like "ca-chook. " The substance was not 

 rigid, but flexible; could be kneaded out of shape, 

 but returned to its round form when pressure was 

 released. The Indians said it was the dried juice 

 of a tree, but for some time the curious explorers 

 had no idea what trees produced it. Some one 

 of them, handling a bit of the strange substance, 

 — possibly writing a letter describing it — dis- 

 covered that it takes out pencil marks. He was 

 probably delighted to discover this useful property 

 of the bouncing ball. He called it "rubber," and 

 this name has always stuck, and no other sub- 

 stance has been found so good for pencil erasers, to 

 this day. 



We can imagine the interest roused in Europe 

 by the specimens of rubber that reached there from 

 America. Explorers in the Amazon territory, and 

 other tropical regions, found that the natives had 

 rubber in their possession. Not long before our 

 Revolution, a party of Frenchmen saw natives 

 tapping trees and gathering the flow of juice. 

 This was the first discovery by white men of trees 

 th.at yield rubber. They learned how the juice 



