India rubber world . man cuts off theBisanga stalks, from which he removes the leaves, anotherholds a number of blades taken from the leaves of the bananatree over the tire, which makes them remarkably a small excavation is dug in the soil. In this the bananaleaf is placed, and the latex poured into it. Three or fourstalks of Cos/us are held together and twisted over the holecontaining the latex, which, under the action of the acid sap,immediately coagulates. The native now, with his hands,molds the coagulated mass into a ball and then presses it firm-ly, this operation being rep
India rubber world . man cuts off theBisanga stalks, from which he removes the leaves, anotherholds a number of blades taken from the leaves of the bananatree over the tire, which makes them remarkably a small excavation is dug in the soil. In this the bananaleaf is placed, and the latex poured into it. Three or fourstalks of Cos/us are held together and twisted over the holecontaining the latex, which, under the action of the acid sap,immediately coagulates. The native now, with his hands,molds the coagulated mass into a ball and then presses it firm-ly, this operation being repeated until all the watery contentof the/(j/^.r has been forced out. •This is not thesamedesigiiation as Kveii by M. van den Kerrkhove, whogivesthe name Costus afer to the plant he lias sketched for The India RuiutHRWoKLD, as illustrated on this page. There are, however, many different speciesof Costus in tropical .\frica, and doubtless the juice of more than one of them isused in coagulatins: rubber—The In order to obtain the sap from the Costus, the nativesometimes use a different process ; he splits the stalk open andpasses it between one of his fingers and the blade of his knife,allowing the sap of the plant to run into a receptacle, where itonly needs to be slightly purified before it may be used for thecoagulation of a correspondingly great quantity of latex. As we have stated above, the sap of the Costus Lucanustanusdoes not in any way act upon the latex of the Clitatidra A mo III tana [aroot rubberplantj. The na-tives use two dif-ferent methods forcoagulating thelatter: I. By boilingthe latex. 2. By pouringthe latex into boil-ing water. In using thefirst named pro-cess, the nativessimply boil thelatex, whereuponit begins to coagu-late as soon asebullition takesplace; this meth-od, however, isgenerally unadvis-able, as the coagu-lated mass retainsin its meshes aquantity of serumwhich is oftenconsiderable in quantity, the albuminous parts of which mayafter a
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