An elastic, resinous substance, produced from a tree, growing abundantly at Cayenne, Quito, and other parts of South America; and also in some parts of the Indies. The tree which produces it is large, straight, and about sixty feet high. There is, however, a small species found in Sumatra and Java, and some of the neighboring islands.
How is the Caoutchouc obtained from the Tree?
By making incisions in the trunk of the tree, from which the fluid resin issues in great abundance, appearing of a milky whiteness at first, but gradually becoming of a dark reddish color, soft and elastic to the touch.
To what use is this substance put?
The Indians make of it boots, shoes, bottles, flambeaux, and a species of cloth. Amongst us it is combined with sulphur, forming the vulcanized rubber of commerce, which is used for many purposes. A greater proportion of sulphur, produces vulcanite, a hard black substance, resembling jet.
Flambeaux, torches burnt to give light.
What is Sponge?
A marine substance, found adhering to rocks and shells under the sea-water, or on the sides of rocks near the shore. Sponge was formerly imagined by some naturalists to be a vegetable production; by others, a mineral, or a collection of sea-mud, but it has since been discovered to be the fabric and habitation of a species of worm, or polypus.
What do you mean by Polypus?
A species of animals called Zoophytes, by which are meant beings having such an admixture of the characteristics of both plants and animals, as to render it difficult to decide to which division they properly belong. They are animal in substance, possessed indeed of a stomach, but without the other animal characteristics of blood-vessels, bones, or organs of sense; these creatures live chiefly in water, and are mostly incapable of motion: they increase by buds or excrescences from the parent zoophyte, and if cut off will grow again and multiply; each part becoming a perfect animal. Myriads of the different species of zoophytes reside in small cells of coral, sponge, &c., or in forms like plants, and multiply in such numbers as to create rocks and whole islands in many seas, by their untiring industry. Polypus signifies having many feet, or roots; it is derived from the Greek.