Gums, Resins, 



104 



[Feb. 1908. 



intended for Sinanteteas Mexicanus, 

 i.e., Mexican Compositae. 



In January, 1905, a correspondent 

 forwarded for identification a small 

 section of a stem to which in a subse- 

 quent letter he gave the name"Guala 

 guayala," stating that he had found that 

 5 per cent, of the bark consisted of 

 rubber of tair quality, but that he could 

 get nothing for the wood, and that after 

 a further examination Of the so-called 

 rubber, he believed that it was useless 

 for any commercial purpose. This stem 

 was determined as being that of Parthe- 

 nium argentatum, A. Gray, a full 

 account of which appeared in Der 

 Tropenflanzer for May, lt)03, and again 

 in the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute 

 for 1906, p. 114. The first identification 

 of Guayule with Parthenium argentatum, 

 appeared in Bull, du Jard. Colon., No. 1, 

 July-August, 1901, p. 105. In the course 

 of the present year further information 

 with regard to Guayule has become 

 available, and is summarized in the 

 paragraphs that follow. 



On January 23rd, 1907, the following 

 memorandum of Guayule, prepared by 

 Mr. W. G. Max Midler, His Majesty's 

 Charge d'Affaires in Mexico, dated 

 December 3rd, 1908, was transmitted to 

 Kew f rom the Colouial Office for obser- 

 vation on the question of introducing the 

 plant into the Colonies : — 



"In my Report on the Mexican Budget 

 for the current fiscal year (Annual Series, 

 No. 3693, p. 9), I referred to the imposition 

 of an export duty on Guayule." ' Guayule ' 

 is a form of rubber extracted from the 

 Guayule plant, which grows in enormous 

 quantities in certain of the Northern 

 States of Mexico, especially San Luis 

 Potosi, Zacatecas, Durangoand Coahuila. 

 The name appears to be a local term and 

 is found in none of the Spanish Dic- 

 tionaries. It must be a compound 

 formed from ' hule,' i.e., rubber. The 

 Guayule industry is now passed from the 

 experimental to the practical stage, and 

 is destined to attain considerable import- 

 ance in Northern Mexico, and under 

 these circumstances I feel that the 

 following information which I have 

 collected regarding this new industry 

 may be of interest. 



Little more than two years ago the 

 Guayule shrub was not only regarded as 

 worthless, but was looked on as a 

 veritable scourge by the Mexican land- 

 owners. In fact, lands thick with this 

 bush were considered worse than useless, 

 and could have been had for a merely 

 nominal sum, while now many sales of 

 Guayule on the ground have been re- 

 ported at over five times the price at 

 which the land itself was valued two or 

 three years ago. Holders of tracts of 



these lands, who had to expend money 

 on them for taxes and other purposes, 

 found them burdensome in the extreme. 

 Now many of these people have reaped 

 fortunes from those same waste lands. 

 For some years 'Guayule' had been 

 known to contain rubber, but it is only 

 within quite a short time that a process 

 has been invented for the extraction of 

 the gum for commercial use. As long 

 auo as 1897, a German named Henry 

 Lrmcke, employed under the Mexican 

 Ministry of Formento, acquired a 

 knowledge of the value of the Guayule 

 plant, known then only to the Indians 

 and a few others who discovered an 

 elastic substance in the plant when 

 chewing it. Mr. Lemcke informed the 

 Mexican Government of his disx>very, 

 and also offered it to various com- 

 panies interested in the rubber in- 

 dustry, with a view to ascertaining 

 whether it was possible to extract a 

 good quality of rubber from the 

 shrub. Chemists and inventors began 

 experimenting; with the plant, but it 

 was not really till towards the end of 

 the year 1904 that the buying of the 

 shrub began at about $15 Mexican per 

 ton. Speculation immediately began, and 

 such was the number of persons anxious 

 to secure quantities of Guayule large 

 enough to justify them in erecting 

 factories for applying the recently dis- 

 covered processes of the extraction of 

 the gum, that buyers have found it 

 very difficult to purchase the plant, and 

 recently contracts for large lots have 

 been reported as high as $100. per ton. 

 It is not to be expected that the gum 

 extracted from the Guayule will ever 

 take the place of rubber, but it can be 

 used as a substitute in many forms of 

 manufacture, especially in a vulcanised 

 form, and can be mixed in large pro- 

 potions with rubber. In itself, it is in- 

 ferior to real rubber, it has very little 

 elasticity and will not bound as true 

 rubber does, and is easily broken. It 

 contains a great deal of soft, sticky 

 matter. Fresh Guayule looks very much 

 like old rubber which has been exposed 

 to the air for years until it has lost its 

 elasticity and strength. It requires there- 

 fore a considerable admixture of ordi- 

 nary rubber to give it strength enough 

 for common commercial purposes. It 

 has the further disadvantage that it 

 deteriorates more rapidly than real 

 rubber. Various extraction processes 

 have been, and are still being, ivgisi.ered 

 at the Mexican Patent Office, but none 

 of these processes have as yet attained 

 to any degree of perfection, as the 

 known results vary from 10 to 12 per 

 cent., whereas the quantity of gum 

 contained in the shrub is known to be 

 approximately 18 per cent. The quality 



