GUTTAPERCHA, 
US 
indiapensable for a thousand different uses. Nothing 
was known even of its origin until the year 1736, when 
the French naturalist La Condamine, while exploring 
the banks of the Amaaon, discovered that it was chiefly 
produced by the Siphonia elastica, a large tree growing 
wild in the primitive forests along the borders of the 
rivers in Guiana and North Brazil. 
The resin is collected by the Indiana in a very simple 
manner. With a small hatchet they make deep and long 
incisions in the rindj from which a 
milky sap abundantly exudes. A 
small wooden peg is then fixed into 
each aperture to prevent its closing, 
and a cup of moist clay fastened 
nnderneath, which in about four or 
five hours is filled with as many 
table-spoonfuls of the juice. The 
produce of a number of incisions 
having been gathered in a large 
earthen vessel, is then spread in 
thin coatings upon moulds made of 
clay, and dried, layer after layer, 
over a fire, until the whole has 
acquired a certain thickness. "When 
perfectly dry, the clay form within 
is broken into small fragments, and 
the pieces are extracted through an 
apertnre, which is always left for the purpose. 
The Icosaudra Gutta, which furnishes the guttapercha 
of commerce, is a native of the Eastern Archipelago and 
the adjacent lands. A few years since, this substance, 
now so celebrated and of such widely extended use, was 
totally unknown in Europe, for though from time imme- 
morial the Malays employed it for making the handles 
of their hatchets and creeses, it was only in the year 
1S43 that Iklr. Montgomery', an English surgeon j having 
casually become acqoainted with its valuable properties, 
p 
Ml 
