An American rubber expert, who recently visited the Amazon rubber camps, says: “The past year more than seventy thousand tons of crude rubber, having a value approximating $300,000,000, were produced, of which forty thousand tons came out of the Amazon River. This was wholly wild rubber, gathered almost entirely from a belt extending along the Amazon and its tributaries, and running less than three miles into the interior. The vast forest beyond these borders is substantially untouched; but with the building of the railroad around the falls of the Madeira, which will be completed in 1911, with the building of roads through the forest connecting up rivers, and with the introduction of the gasoline boat, vast districts heretofore inaccessible will be brought within the reach of the rubber gatherer; and, while the gain in production each year has been approximately but ten per cent. over the previous year, there is no question that this percentage will increase largely from this time forward.” It is not the sap of the tree that produces the rubber, but a juice which is yielded by the bark. As it flows this juice has the appearance of milk, and acts in much the same way. If left to itself it will separate into a lower fluid and a surface mass like cream, and this is the so-called india-rubber. Less than fifteen per cent. of this “cream” in the product of the tree is unprofitable and does not pay for the working. Various ways have been devised to separate the rubber by processes of coagulation. The native method has always been by a smoking heat, but in some places chemicals are used; again separators, similar to those employed in butter making, have been introduced with good results, so it is said. The method and care used has a very marked influence on the price and value of the crude rubber in the markets. The heating by smoke is generally considered to produce the cleanest and purest form of rubber for commercial export.