Rubber is the coagulated sap of more than 300 varieties of tropical
trees and vines--the Landolphia of Africa, the Ficus of the Malay
Peninsula, the Guayule shrub of Mexico and the Castilloa of South
America, Central America and Southern Mexico are all important rubber
producers, but far more important than all of the others together is the
Hevea, a native of Brazil.
Hevea trees are scattered through the dense forests of practically every
part of the Amazon Basin, a territory more than two-thirds as large as
the United States.
How was Rubber First Used?
Down in Brazil, several hundred miles up the Amazon River, there stood a
great forest of trees and in this forest--the same as in forests of
today--were birds and animals and bugs and beetles, etc. All trees are
protected by nature; some are protected from bugs eating their leaves,
by other bugs eating up these bugs; other trees are protected by having
a thorny or bristly bark.
[Illustration: INDIANS PLAYING WITH A RUBBER BALL WHEN COLUMBUS CAME IN
SIGHT
_Courtesy of the United States Rubber Co._]
In these forests in which the rubber tree grows there was a wood-boring
beetle, and this beetle would attack these rubber trees, boring into
them; but the tree, in order to protect itself, had a poisonous juice,
and as soon as the beetle bored into the tree, this juice killed him.
Then the juice would fill up the hole the beetle had made, and the tree
would go on growing as before.
In those days the natives around these forests (who were half Indian and
half Negro) happened to find some of this juice sticking on the tree.
They cut it off, rolled it together and made a ball, with which they
would play games. The first mention of it was made by Herrera in his
account of the second voyage of Columbus, wherein he speaks of a ball
used by Indians, made from the gum of a tree which was lighter and
bounced better than the far-famed balls of Castile.
[Illustration: IN THE JUNGLE