THE COLLECTION OF LATEX 
Some of the trees had actually hundreds of those cuts, 
many, of course, healed. Each cut exudes latex for only 
a comparatively short time, merely an hour or so. 
During the first month after a tree is tapped, the 
supply of latex is generally plentiful; the second month 
it gives less; less still the third month. On an average 
twenty trees give about one litre of latex a day. Three 
litres of latex are necessary in order to obtain one litre of 
rubber. At the head-waters of the Arinos River 600 trees 
gave from 30 to 35 arobas (450 to 525 kilometres) of fine 
rubber in the first month, and about 20 arobas (300 
kilometres) of sarnambe (second quality with impurities). 
One aroba is 15 kilometres. 
The latex of the seringueira in the Arinos region was 
of a beautiful white, quite liquid, and with a pungent, 
almost sickening, odour. When a new tree was tapped, 
the lower towards the ground the incisions were made, the 
better. If after considerable tapping the tree did not 
yield much, it was advisable to incise the tree higher up. 
In that region the trees exuded latex more abundantly 
when they began to have new leaves in October. Late in 
the dry season the latex flowed less freely. When the 
weather was windy all the latex seemed to contract to the 
summit of the trees and hardly flowed at all from the 
incisions. When it rained, on the contrary, it flowed 
freely, but was spoilt by being mixed with water; so 
that a good seringueiro must know well not only where 
and how, but also when, to tap the trees, in order to get 
good results. 
Several ways were employed in order to coagulate the 
latex. The simplest was the one used in Matto Grosso. 
The latex was poured into a rectangular wooden mould, 
0.61 metre long (2 feet), 0.46 metre wide (1% feet), 
and 0.15 metre deep (about 6 inches). Upon the 
latex was placed a solution of alum and warm water. 
Then coagulation took place. In order to compress the 
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