The native rubber-tree of Brazil, botanically known as _Hevea brasiliensis_, yields the finest quality rubber. This specially good material is called “Para rubber,” after the port of Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, which was the first centre of distribution. The whole flourishing rubber industry of to-day owes its origin to the trade which sprang up in Para rubber, following on the colonization of the Amazon Valley by the Portuguese. During the first half of the eighteenth century Lisbon began to import rubber goods, such as hats, boots, bags, and capes, from Brazil, and in 1759 the Government of Para sent a suit of rubber clothes as a present to the King of Portugal. In the early part of the eighteenth century, too, France began to take an interest in rubber, and it was not long before other countries, including England, began to experiment with the new material. Until well on in the nineteenth century, rubber goods were made in Brazil only. The chief market for them was North America, which imported a varied assortment of such things as rubber shoes, tobacco-pouches, travelling bags, powder-flasks, and water-bottles. Amongst all these articles, the waterproof shoes did most to popularize the new material; the first shipment was sent to Boston in 1820, and these found such favour with the Americans that a couple of years later the United States imported another 500 pairs. So quickly was this second stock sold out that the States began to think an opportunity had arisen for them to make a new outlet for their manufacturing energy and enterprise, and very soon they decided to import raw rubber and manufacture rubber goods. About the same time, some pioneer rubber-goods factories were erected on the Continent. The factory soon began to rival the forest workshop in the variety of goods turned out, and in such details of craftsmanship as style and finish. But the new enterprise did not prove very satisfactory, because it was found that these goods did not wear well. Evidently they suffered from exposure to the air, being damaged by changes of temperature. This great drawback to manufactured rubber goods was removed by the discovery of a method of treating rubber with sulphur. The process, called “vulcanization,” was discovered by an American named Charles Goodyear, who made his first successful experiments in 1839. He himself did much to improve his method of making rubber more durable, and he also worked up this product into a material similar to horn; but it was left for another inventive genius to find out how to polish that material and give us the very useful form of rubber which we call “vulcanite.”