Later on he wrote: “many are the uses which the Omaguas make of that resin in the central parts of South America, especially among the Indians of Pará where the Portuguese gave to the tree that produces it, the name of =Pauseringa=, because from it ‘seringas,’ much in vogue among the Omaguas, are manufactured; these being little hollow balloons in the shape of a pear, into which a tube is inserted. “In Pará it is moulded in still many different manners, they make =borracha=, faces of animals, hollow or solid balls and also apply it in the manufacture of boots which become quite water-proof and when smoked acquire the appearance of leather.” Fresneau, a collaborator of de la Condamine, sought to study the vegetable plants which produced that gum, obtaining as a result that Aublet, a French botanist, proceeded to interest himself in the question and completed de la Condamine’s studies, and then classifying the hevé under the domination of =Hevea Guyanensis=. It was only in 1798 that the =Ficus elastica=, the first Asiatic plant producer of rubber became known, and up till 1860 South America, English India and Java were the only rubber-producing countries in the world. [Illustration: ADMIRAL JOSÉ CARLOS DE CARVALHO, Vice-President of the Federal Government of Brazil Commission.] Much later than this—in 1885, Africa commenced to export this article, an industry which reached its apogee after the creation by Leopold II of the Independent State of the Congo. In the meantime, in spite of the fact of some of the qualities of rubber and even its applications being known in Europe ever since the Sixteenth Century, it was only during the Nineteenth Century, that this product conquered that position as an article very much in evidence which it now occupies as an indispensable material in modern industry or even still yet for the necessities which civilization created. Hérissant and Macquer, in 1768, discovered the first dissolving processes; in 1770, Priestley vulgarized the property of the “borracha” in wiping out lead-pencil tracings from which the English name =Rubber= is derived; Berniard, Fourcroy, Berthollet, Grossart and others occupied themselves about this commodity, with more or less success. Madier, in 1820, found out a mechanical means of cutting the rubber-blocks in order to obtain elastic threads and three years afterwards, MacIntosh discovered that naphtha dissolved rubber and thus made cloth impervious to the action of water.