A Tropical Industry. 
INDIA-RUBBER (CAOUTCHOUC). 
By E. COWLEY, 
Manager, Kamerunga Nursery Cairns. 
Ir is now about twenty-five years ago tkat the writer's attention was first 
directed to India-rubber. It was brought about by meeting a gentleman 1h 
Mauritius, who had been sent to Madagascar by a French company to collect 
caoutehouc. His success had, however, been limited, and he was returning 
to Hurope. ven twenty-five years ago the exigencies of trade demanded 4 
a larger supply of caoutchouc. This demand since that time has been very 
considerably augmented, so much so that prices have risen owing to the 
shortage of supply. The cultivation of India-rubber-producing plants has 
been essayed both in India and in Borneo with considerable success, 
particularly in India. Up to comparatively recent times India-rubber was 
obtained by tapping the indigenous trees in the countries in which they grew, 
and was traded like other natural products to Europeans and Antnericans. 
There is no record of caoutchoue being used by any of the ancient nations, 
notwithstanding the fact that India-rubber is produced from Ficus elasticd, 
which is indigenous to India and other Asiatic countries. The best rubber is, 
however, obtained from South America, and is called “ Para rubber.” The 
first notice of India-rubber was given nearly 500 years ago by Herrera, who, in 
the second yoyage of Columbus, observed that the inhabitants of Hagh 
played a game with balls made “ of the gum of a tree,” and that the balls 
bounced better than the balls of Castille (Herrera Historia, dec. 1, lib. iii, cap. 
-ty)., Torquemada, however, seems to have been the first to have mentioned 
by name the tree yielding it. In his “ Monarquia Indiana,” published at 
Madrid, 1615, he says: “There is a tree which the Mexican Indians call 
Ulequahuitl; it is held in great estimation, and grows in the hot country ; it 
is a very high tree; the leaves are round and of an ashy colour. This tree 
yields a white milky substance, thick and gummy, and in great abundance. 
He further states that the juice was collected and allowed to settle in 
calabashes, and was afterwards softened in hot water, or the juice smeared 
over the body and allowed to dry, when it was rubbed off. The tree mentioned 
by Torquemada has usually been identified as Castilloa elistica (Cerv.) ; but 
the above account cannot apply to it, as that tree is described by Cervantes as 
one of the loftiest trees of the north-east coast of Mexico, and its leaves are 
| 
not round, but oblong-lanceolate. Castilloa (probably in commemoration of 
Castillejo), a genus (containing two or three species) belonging to the order 
Urticaces, and having male and female flowers, alternating one with the other, 
on the same branch; ©. edaslica contains a milky juice, yielding caoutchouc’— 
Nicholson, A.LS., Dictionary of Gardening.- Even at that early date the 
Spaniards used the juice of the “ ube-tree’” to waterproof their cloaks. The 
fact, however, did not attract attention in the old world, and no rubber seems 
to have reached Europe until long afterwards. ; ; 
The first accurate information concerning any of the caoutchouc trees was 
furnished by La Condamine, who was sent in 1755 by the French Government 
to measure an are of the meridian near Quito. In 1751 the researches of M. 
Fresnau, an engineer residing in French Guiana, were published by the French 
Academy ; and in 1755 M. Aubht described the species yielding caoutchouc in 
French Guiana. Nevertheless, India-rubber remained for some time unknown 
in England, except as a curiosity ; for Dr. Priestly, in the preface to his work 
on “perspective,” called attention to it as a novelty for erasing pencil-marks, 
and states that it was sold in pieces of cubic half-inches for 3s. each. Most 
_ readers of about fifty years of age will’remember it in somewhat similar sizes 
