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We found several people encamped here, who were engaged in collecting and preparing the rubber, and thus had an opportunity of observing the process. The tree which yields this valuable sap is the Siphonia elastica, a member of the Euphorbiaceous order; it belongs, therefore, to a group of plants quite different from that which furnishes the caoutchouc of the East Indies and Africa.
The next day brought us a genuine Siphonia, another genus thus far only known from the jurassic beds; and it is worth recording, that I noticed in the collection of Governor Rawson another sponge, brought to him by a fisherman who had caught it on his line, on the coast of Barbados, which belongs to the genus Scyphia.
This name is applied to a caoutchouc plantation, the caoutchouc being extracted from the "seringueira" tree, whose scientific name is siphonia elastica. It is said that, by negligence or bad management, the number of these trees is decreasing in the basin of the Amazon, but the forests of seringueira trees are still very considerable on the banks of the Madeira, Purus, and other tributaries.
The Siphonia elastica grows only on the lowlands in the Amazons region; hitherto, the rubber has been collected chiefly in the islands and swampy parts of the mainland within a distance of fifty to a hundred miles to the west of Para; but there are plenty of untapped trees still growing in the wilds of the Tapajos, Madeira, Jurua, and Jauari, as far as 1800 miles from the Atlantic coast.
When the first number of the great work of Goldfuss, on the fossils of Germany, made its appearance, about half a century ago, the most novel types it made known were several genera of sponges from the jurassic and cretaceous beds, described under the names of Siphonia, Chemidium, and Scyphia.
Immense cargoes are shipped from the town of Para, on the river Amazon, and obtained from the Siphonia elastica." "Are the stems all made of India-rubber?" asked Edith, who thought that was exactly what they looked like. "Are the stems of the maple trees made of maple-sugar?" replied Miss Harson. "The India-rubber is got from its tree as the sugar is from the maple tree.
The first is the hevea of Aublet, or siphonia of the modern botanists, known to furnish the caoutchouc of commerce in Cayenne and Grand Para; the second has pinnate leaves, and its juice is milky, but very thin, and almost destitute of viscosity. The dapicho appears to be the result of an extravasation of the sap from the roots.
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