A match is a little thing, but nothing else can do its work.
II
ABOUT INDIA RUBBER
When you pick a dandelion or a milkweed, a white sticky "milk" oozes out; and this looks just like the juice of the various sorts of trees, shrubs, and vines from which India rubber is made. The "rubber plant" which has been such a favorite in houses is one of these; in India it becomes a large tree which has the peculiar habit of dropping down from its branches "bush-ropes," as they are called. These take root and become stout trunks. There is literally a "rubber belt" around the world, for nearly all rubber comes from the countries lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. More than half of all that is brought to market is produced in the valley of the Amazon River; and some of this "Para rubber," as it is called, from the seaport whence it is shipped, is the best in the world.
Courtesy General Rubber Co.
TAPPING RUBBER TREES IN SUMATRA
The plantation on which this photograph was taken has 45,000 acres of planted rubber trees, and employs 14,000 coolies.
The juice or latex flows best about sunrise, and so the natives who collect it have to be early risers. They make little cuts in the bark of the tree, stick on with a bit of clay a tiny cup underneath each cut, and move on through the forest to the next tree. Sometimes they make narrow V-shaped cuts in the bark, one above another, but all coming into a perpendicular channel leading to the foot of the
tree. Later in the day the collectors empty the cups into great jugs and carry them to the camp.