October, 1911.] 



291 



Saps and Exudations. 



it comes nearest to being my ideal. 

 Not in Georgetown nor on the coast. It 

 is a trifle too sticky there, but healthy 

 withal. But 40 or 50 miles inland it is 

 just what one who love tropical warmth 

 in midday and cool nights would desire. 



I met a young American in George- 

 town on the occasion of my last visit 

 who is well known to many in the rubber 

 trade. He it was who once crossed the 

 Andes and came down over the falls of 

 the Madeira with a lot of rubber for the 

 Safety Insulated Wire and Cable Co. He 

 had become a resident of British Guiana, 

 having purchased an island not far from 

 Georgetown, and was engaged in plant- 

 ing Hevea. He was tapping wild 

 Sapiums that he found on his land, 

 shipping the rubber in and getting a 

 very good price for it. His backers were 

 a couple of rubber manufacturers in the 

 United States, who, although not big 

 factors, were enterprising enough to 

 wish to be sure of their own source of 

 supply. The young Ametican was 

 living in a little cabin that he had 

 erected on the island and hiring a few 

 men, and for the amount of money that 

 he had to spend doing a lot of work. His 

 seed supply he secured in a very shrewd 

 way. Most of the planters have to send 

 to the Far East, and there are lots of 

 "failures to germinate" in the seed. 

 This youngster found in Trinidad a 

 small estate with a few old Heveas on it. 

 He induced a friend to buy it, and the 

 trees furnish all of the seed he can com- 

 fortably take care of. 



He was in excellent health with the 

 exception of " hives," as he explained. 

 Visitors to the Guianas and Brazil, if 

 they stray outside of the cities, are apt 

 to suffer from mild attacks of "hives." 

 At least that is what they confide to 

 some friend after a period of energetic 

 and unavailing scratching. The fact is, 

 they have annexed a small red bug, the 

 bete rouge, that burrows beneath the 

 skin and is troublesome if not eliminated. 

 Alcohol will do it, one or two applica- 

 tions being sufficient usually. As a 

 preventive many soap their legs and 

 come off scot free. And others, parti- 

 cularly those who are used to tropical 

 pests, pay no attention at all to them. I 

 collected some in all of the places that I 

 visited, but it was in British Guiana that 

 I got the liveliest specimens. They 

 settle behind the knees and about the 

 waist and are energetic at nightfall. I 

 was out of alcohol, and so I used a lini- 

 ment that one of the planters had in 

 stock. It killed the parasites promptly, 

 but it didn't stop there. It searched me 

 through and through, penetrating, burn- 

 ing until it finally exhausted itself, 



except for the smell it left behind. It 

 was fine, one felt so warm and comfort- 

 able when the ache stopped. I was 

 therefore able as an expert on tropical 

 itches to diagnose my friend's ailment 

 and prescribe a remedy, not the lini- 

 ment, however. 



Speaking of trees indigenous to British 

 Guiana, that is, rubber trees, the Sapium 

 Jenmani, called by the natives Touck- 

 pong, seems the most valuable. I had 

 often wondered why Professor Harrison 

 and the very alert and scholarly Assist- 

 ant Director of Science and Agricultuie, 

 F. A. Stockdale, paid so much atten- 

 tion to it. Nor was I enlightened 

 when I saw the specimen planted by 

 Jenman on the Botanical Gardens. It 

 looked so scraggy and sickly and was 

 such a pitiful object. But when 1 saw a 

 wild specimen, in soil adapted for it, a 

 fine straight forest tree at least three 

 feet in diameter, I began a revision of 

 my prior prejudices. Then, too, it de- 

 velops that it is one of those trees that 

 can be tapped far up on the trunk, and 

 the latex coagulates on the tree forming 

 a very high-grade scrap. The depart- 

 ment had some of the rubber valued 

 some three years ago, and the price put 

 upon it was $1*07 and plantation at $1"16, 

 The Imperial Institute analyzed the 

 samples and they contained 93' 7 per 

 cent, of rubber with a resin content of 

 only 1 '8 per cent. In 1909-10 the colony 

 shipped 6,369 pounds of rubber, most of 

 which was in scrap form, and doubtless 

 Sapium rubber. It was not all care- 

 fully collected, however, and it brought 

 about $3,250. 



Jenman it was, who back in 1883, first 

 really brought the rubber to the atten- 

 tion of the world. He journeyed far 

 into the forest, found the trees which 

 at first ha thought belonged to the 

 Ficus family. What he wrote of it 

 is most interesting. In part it is as 

 follows : — 



"The trees were large individuals, 

 four or five feet in diameter of trunk, 

 and 120 or more feet high. Their trunks 

 w T ere long, straight and un branched for 

 6U or 70 feet from the ground. The 

 lowest six feet of one had been scarred, 

 and from the scars the milk had run and 

 was dried in tears or strings several 

 inches long on the bark. Most of the 

 congealed rubber was, however, con- 

 tained in the fissures made by the 

 cutlass cuts, from which places it was 

 rather hard to extract it, because of the 

 tenacity with which it held to the inner 

 bark from which, it had oozed. I 

 gathered and made a ball, following the 

 Indian plan of winding it up like twine 

 of what was on the trunk, They score 



