1 Junz, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 477 
suspended. If this clot is cut into slices while still soft, and pressed between 
sugar-cane crushers or in a heavy press, the bulk of the solution is extracted, 
and a fairly pure rubber is found. On drying, it does not give off the putrid 
smell characteristic of the ordinary Ceara “scrap.” 
In the Queensland scrubs there is a large number of milk and rubber 
yielding trees, such as all the fig family, and the genus Eaweaccaria, one of 
which the #. Dallachyana, Baill., yields a quantity of milky juice when tapped. 
This tree was described by Mr. F. M. Bailey, Government Botanist, in this 
Journal (Vol. L1I., p. 284) as the Serub Poison-tree, or indigenous “rubber” 
plant. Two other species—namely, 2. Agallocha, Linn. (River Poison-tree or 
Milky Mangrove), and ‘2. parvifolia, Muell. Arg. (the Guttapercha of the 
Gulf country)—are found in this colony. Both trees furnishrubber. The milk 
on analysis shows 19°61 per cent. of caoutchoue. Certain other trees (Kicksia 
and Landolphia) produce excellent rubber when their milk is mixed with that of 
trees of other species. The new process of rubber extraction might be tried on 
some of the above rubber-trees, and, if successful, another industry might be 
entered upon in Queensland with great advantage, at small expense, as the 
trees are plentiful in our scrubs. Certainly with a cheap method of prepara- 
tion, the price of rubber may fall very low, but the demand for the article is so 
great that it should offer inducement to business men to make a trial of the 
process of centrifugal extraction of this, at present, valuable product. 
INDIARUBBER FROM #UPHORBLA. 
Mason C. Giperne has made a communication to the Standard, in which he 
states that enormous quantities of rubber are locked up in the jungles of India 
in the various species of Huphorbia, or “milk-bush,” with which it is in parts 
thickly studded. Many years ago when in India, he ordered a box of chemicals 
from England; and in the course of some experiments he made, he added a little 
nitric acid to the strong alkaline milk juice of Huphorbia tircualli, and, to his 
surprise, not only was the alkali neutralised, but a piece of Indiarubber was left 
floating on the surface, He suggested that perhaps a cheaper acid would prove 
equally efficacious. The milk could easily be extracted from the milk-bush b 
means of a common native sugar cane press. The only question then would be 
whether the acid should be brought to the milk or the milk to the acid, and in 
the latter case, whether it should be sent in the form of a fluid, or be previously 
dried in the sun, and exported to England in the form of the gum, known in 
commerce as Huphorbium. 
VANILLA. 
Tre vanilla plant (VaniNa planifolia) is thus described by Dr. H. A. Alford 
Nicholls, M.D., F.L.S., C.M.Z.S.* :—‘ Vanilla beans are the cured fruits of a 
climbing orchid found growing wild in the hot, humid forests of Central and South 
America. When the Spaniards conquered Mexico, they found vanilla in use 
among the Aztecs for flavouring chocolate, and it is used for the same purpose. 
by the English and French manufacturers of the present day.” 
The vine is now cultivated in Mexico, Brazil, Honduras, Guadeloupe, 
Réunion, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Java, and Tahiti in Polynesia, but a econ- 
siderable portion of the vanilla of commerce is gathered from wild plants found 
growing in the ‘forests of Mexico. In Guadeloupe, Réunion, and Mauritius 
the plant is cultivated by small proprietors, and many of the householders in 
these islands make money by selling the pods grown on vines cultivated in their 
gardens and on the walls of their houses. 
z *Text-book of Tropical Agriculture, 1892, 
rl 
