Connecticut western news., 1889-06-12
INDIA RUBBER TREE.
Incisions Are Made to Obtain
 the Valuable Milk.
Propagating the Plant for Dec
 orative Purposes.

India Rubber tree is the Ficus elastica of botanists, and, although tol- erably we'll known as greenhouse, window or decorative plant at the prin- cipal rubber stores, it has not so very early history, having been introduced in Europe in 1915. It is native of the East Indies. The plant belongs to the fig family, all of which exude, when wounded, milky juice, with, of course, fig for fruit, this one being about the size of cherry, and not edi- ble. There are not less than so known species distributed over large part of the tropical world.
 The India rubber tree, in its native nelds, attains the size of our sycamore, growing chiefly among decomposed rocks and vegetable matter over the de- clivities of mountains. It grows very rapidly when young, reaching, it is said, to the height of twenty-four feet in four years and with trunk foot in diame- ter. 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 Jatro- pha elastica. The name, India-rubber, came from the discovery that the article was useful to remove marks of the ordi- nary 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 of foot from each other, all round the tree, and even up to the top. After one course of tapping, the tree re- quires to rest fortnight, when the process may be repeated. When the liquid is exposed to the air, it becomes firm and elastic substance, fifty ounces of pure, milky juice yielding about if teen of clean washed gum. This gum used to be known by the Indian name of caoutchouc, veritable jaw breaker to the English tongue, and yet, in our boyhood days, when this now plentiful rubber was being introduced into sundry uses, that was its common name.
 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 anne famous. It is also mixed with another product from an Indi an tree, gutta percha, introduced into the arts by Dr. Montgomery in 1S43. This gum is the exact opposite of rubber in being non-elastic. The young 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 at mosphere of room well, and the leaves are readily rid of all dust by simply spraying. Gardeners propagate thei1 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 propagat- ing from, but an old plant is general ly selected and induced to throw out as many shoots as possible. In the olden times propagation was effected by layer ing or winding around moss, or insert ing shoot through fower-pot made for the purpose, in which the root formed, and afterward severing iron the parent treo. .-Prairie Farnser.