Solution and Reproduction of India Rubber; For the Manufacture of Air Proof and Water Proof Articles (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HISTORY OF INDIA RUBBER. India Rubber was .known in Europe as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century; but We possessed no definite knowledge of its origin, until De la Condaminc gave us some accurate information about it. Condamine, who, pursuing the study of natural history, travelled to South America, found the India Rubber there used by the natives in the manufacture of many kinds of utensils, and by his investigations, soon discovered the origin of this peculiar substance. He published the first printed account of it in 1751, and described the India Rubber as a dried vegetable juice, which the natives obtained from a tree. They gave it, as he said, the peculiar bottle-shape, in which it comes to the market, by rubbing several coatings of it over clay forms. Later travellers confirmed this intelligence for the most part, but discovered also that several plants contained India Rubber in their sap, and might be made to yield it up. Among these are the Siphonia elastica, Castilleja elaslica, Hippomene biglandulosa, Ficus re- ligiosa and indica, Artocarpus integrifolius, Urceolaria elastica, and some others. In our country, also, there are several plants which contain India Rubber, and some of them in no sma 1 quantity, the euphorbia, for example, the poppy, and others; yet it is not worth while to cultivate these small plants on that account, since, according to my experiments, it is to be obtained only from the sap which flows out spontaneously, and not from that which is pressed out. For this reason, unless it shall prove to be possible to make it artificially, we must depend upon a supply from abroad. The sap of the Siphonia elastica, a South American tree, which has also been called Siphonia Cahucu, Hevea Guianensis, Hevea Cautschuc, and Ja- tropa elastica, furnis...