INTRODUCTION OF GUTTA PERCHA INTO ENGLAND. 137 
ART. XLV. — HISTORY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF GUTTA 
PERCHA INTO ENGLAND. 
By Dr. Wm. Montgomerie. 
Having in many late numbers of the Mechanics' Mag- 
azine seen frequent notices of the patents taken out for the 
application of the new substance, gutta percha, to various 
purposes, and its extensive usefulness becoming daily more 
apparent, it has occurred to me that as I was the person 
through whom the substance was first brought to the notice 
of the public, a few observations from me regarding it 
might be valued by many of the readers of your highly 
popular and useful journal. 
I may not arrogate to myself the actual discovery of gutta 
percha; for, although previous to my introduction of it, it 
was quite unknown to Europeans, still it was known to a 
few of the inhabitants of certain localities of the Malayan 
forests ; but even most of the native inhabitants of the 
towns and villages near those localities, to whom I showed 
it, did not know what it was, and it was likely to have re- 
mained unknown from the very trifling uses to which it 
was applied, being, as far as I could ascertain, only occa- 
sionally used to make handles for parangs, (wood chop- 
pers,) instead of wood or buffalo horn. 
As far back as 1822, when I was on duty at Singapore as 
assistant-surgeon to the residency, I had obtained the name 
of it, while making inquiries relative to caoutchouc, of 
which there are several varieties ; and some very fine spe- 
cimens were brought me, particularly one called gutta 
girek (the i sounded as in Italian, and the k almost mute ;) 
and I was told that there was another variety called gutta 
percha, and sometimes gutta tuban, which they said was 
harderthan the gutta girek; but none of it was brought to me 
