Balata and the Balata Industry. 213 
that has been generally adopted of buying the 
balata in thin sheets. If it be offered in any other 
form, the purchaser has it cut through before the 
transfer is made. Formerly it was purchased generally in 
lumps, or blocks, as the collectors chose to make it up, but 
experience has taught exporters to be careful in acquir- 
ing balata put up in such forms now. Inside these blocks 
any available substance that would tell well in weight 
— sand, stone, clay, iron, &c. — was carefully worked up. 
This kind of adulteration was carried to such an extent 
at one time that the trade was discredited. The balata- 
coated garments of the collector, when they got too stiff 
or too dilapidated for further bush use, he probably 
thought an a6l of justifiable economy to ingeniously in- 
corporate in the gum he was preparing for sale, where 
they remained to be discovered by the manufacturer in 
England. All this, as I have said, in Berbice at least, 
has been effectually stopped now, and the balata con- 
tains nothing more foreign to its character than the 
debris that was, with conscious indifference, dried in the 
milk. The precautions that are now taken, and the ex- 
perience the agents have had in the lines fraud is 
attempted, generally have reduced adulteration to in- 
considerable proportions, and it manifests itself only 
occasionally in the attempt to pass off a little water, that 
the collector will say was unavoidably caught in collect- 
ing, with the milk. The milk of several india-rubber 
trees, which I shall allude more to further on, is invari- 
ably collected when the trees are met and mixed with 
the balata milk, but the purchasers recognise this, and 
appear to have no objection to the practice. 
With regard to tht effect of bleeding and what its 
