The Clifton clarion., 1889-07-24
THE INDIA-RUB4ER TREE.
An Attractive Plant Which Is as Useful
 as It Is Ornamental.

An Attractive Plant Which Is Useful
 as It Is Ornamental
 This plant is the ficus elastica os botanists, and, although tolerably well known as greenhouse, window or decorative plant at the principal rub' Der stores, it has not so very early history, having been introduced in Eu- rope in 1915. It is native of the East Indias. The plant belongs to the fig family, all of which exclude, when wounded, a milky juice, with, of course, fig for fruit, this one being about the size of a cherry, and not edible. There are not less than eighty known species distributed over a large part of the tropical world.
 The India-rubber tree in its native fields attains the size of our sycamore, growing chiefly among decomposed rocks and vegetable matter over the declivities of mountains. It grows very rapidly when young. reaching, it is said, to the height of twenty-four feet in four years, and with a trunk foot in diameter The well-known India-rubber is the product of this tree as found in India, but in South America there are several trees from which it is obtained. but the chief American tree is the Jatropha elastica. The name, India-rubber, came from the discovery that the article was use- ful to remove marks of the ordinary lead pencil, and is mentioned by Dr. Priestly in his work on perspective printed in 1770, as having just been brought to his notice. The Indians of America gave the name cahuchu to the hardened juice, and from this our word caoutchouc is derived.
 The milk from which the rubber is made is extracted by making incisions through the bark to the wood, at the distance ot foot from each other. all around the trees, and even up to the top. After one course of tapping, the tree requires to rest a fortnight, when the process may be repeated. When the liquid is exposed to the air it be- comes firm and elastic substance, fifty ounces of pure milky juice yield ing about fifteen of clear washed gum. This gum used to be known by the h. dian name of caoutchouc, veritable jaw-breaker to the English tongue, and yet, in our boyhood days, when +his now plentiful rubber was being introduced into sundry uses, that was its common name. j
 For the manifold uses to which it is now put it is vulcanized. This was the discovery of Goodyear, that at the time made his name famous. It is al- so mixed with another product from an Indian tree. gutta percha, intro- duced in the arts by Dr. Montgomery in 1S43. This gum is the exact oppo- site of rubber it being1non-elastic.
 The plant has large, glossy leaves, thick, oval and pointed. It is quite an attractive plant, particularly as specimen window plant, without others near it. It stands the dry atmosphere of a room well, and the leaves are readily rid of all dust by simply spray ing. Gardeners propagate their stock from cuttings, which grow readily enough from single eye and leaf, each bud thus forming new plant. Young plants are not much used for propa- gating from, but an old plant is gen. orally selected and induced to throw out as many shoots as possible. In the olden times propagation was effected by layering or winding around moss, or inserting shoot through flower pot made for the purpose, in which the roots formed, and afterward severing from the parent tree.-Prairie Farmer