265 



coagulated in a humid soil secluded from the 

 contact of light * ; it is caoutchouc in a particu- 

 lar state, I had almost said an etiolated caout- 

 chouc. The humidity of the soil seems to ac- 

 count for the undulating form of the edges of 

 the dapicho, and it's division into layers. 



I often observed at Peru, that on pouring 

 slowly the milky juice of the hevea, or the sap 

 of the carica, into a large quantity of water, the 

 coagulum forms undulating outlines. The da- 

 picho is certainly not peculiar to the forest that 

 extends from Javita to Pimichin, although this 

 is the only spot, where it has hitherto been found. 

 I have no doubt, that on digging in French 

 Guyana beneath the roots and the old trunks 

 of the hevea, those enormous masses of corky 

 caoutchouc which I have just described, 

 would from time to time be found. As it 

 is observed in Europe, that at the fall of the 

 leaf the sap is conveyed toward the root, it 

 would be curious to examine, whether, within 

 the tropics, the milky juices of the urticee, the 



* See vol iv, p. 225. 

 + Thus at five or six inches depth between the roots of 

 the hymenea courbaril masses of the resin anime (erroneously 

 called copal) are discovered. They are sometimes taken for 

 amber found in inland places. This phenomenon seems to 

 throw some light on the origin of those large masses of elec- 

 trum, which are picked up from time to time on the coast of 

 Prussia. (Schweigger Beob., 1811), p. 104.) 



