When you see Ficus elastica in its native element, you can hardly believe that it is exactly the same species of vegetation as the small “rubber plants” whose acquaintance you have made in many a hall and drawing-room. At home, on the lower slopes of the mountains of Northern India—in Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bhotan, Assam, and Burma—and in Java and Sumatra, it is a big tree, which has very peculiar habits. In the early years of its life the tree has a single trunk, with numerous branches. The branches soon begin to let down bush-ropes, which in growing reach to the ground. Here they enter the soil and take root, and as these new roots spread, the bush-ropes develop into big trunks. A well-established Ficus is a most curious sight. It has claimed for its own an extensive ground space, the whole surface of which is occupied by exposed roots. Rising from their midst is a crowd of large trunks; and high and low among the branches are the aerial roots, from which all but one of the crowd came into existence as bush-ropes.
TAPPING A RUBBER-VINE, BELGIAN CONGO. [Page 39]
To get at the Ficus milk, the natives hack great pieces out of the trunks of the trees. Like the Africans, they sacrifice quality to quantity in their general methods of collecting and preparing their rubber.
The material made from Ficus milk is commonly known as Assam rubber.
Rubber of various qualities is now made from the latex of the Jelutong tree. This tree, which is a giant among forest giants, flourishes in the jungles of Sarawak, Borneo, Sumatra, and Malaya. The tapping of Jelutong is roughly done by natives, and the milk is coagulated by the help of petroleum.
[CHAPTER X]
KINDRED PRODUCTS TO RUBBER
Distinct from rubber, but closely akin to it, are the two materials known as “gutta-percha” and “balata.”
The gutta-percha tree has its home in the Far East, in Malay, the East Indies, and the South Sea Islands. The trees are sometimes tapped as they stand, by a similar method of V-shaped cuts as is practised by the Nicaraguans in tapping Castilloas. Sometimes they are felled, trunk and branches being then ringed with cuts.