INDIA-RUBBER TREES 511 
species of Siphonia was, at the time of my arrival 
at Para (July 1849), a branch of industry limited to 
the immediate environs of that city, being prin- 
cipally carried on in the island of Marajo and about 
the mouth of the Tocantins. The price it fetched 
in the Para market (10 milreis the arroba, about 
lod. a pound), and the great gains which those 
who trade in forest produce expect on their outlay, 
prevented the people of the interior from employing 
themselves in its extraction, to which must be added 
the general apathy of the Indians in the matter of 
undertaking any new kind of labour. 
When the trees are flowering nearly all the milk 
goes to the nourishment of the flowers and none 
can be obtained from the trunk, while if a flower- 
panicle is wounded the milk starts out in large 
drops. It is customary to leave the trees un- 
touched for a few months, until the fruit has 
attained its full size. About Para the collection of 
rubber seems limited to the dry season, June to 
December. In the Upper Rio Negro the rubber 
trees flower from November to the end of January, 
and when I left San Carlos on November 23 
little milk was to be obtained. 
The usual mode of drying the milk by smoke 
applied to successive coatings on a mould is 
followed by most rubber -collectors. Some have 
filled a small square box with the milk and allowed 
it to coagulate, but as the milk does not harden 
till the end of ten days or more, and the mass then 
requires to be cut into slices and subjected to 
heavy pressure in order to free it from the water 
and air entangled in its substance, this mode is by 
no means popular. 
