The resin is collected by the Indians in a very simple manner. With a small hatchet they make deep and long incisions in the rind, from which a milky sap abundantly exudes. A small wooden peg is then fixed into each aperture to prevent its closing, and a cup of moist clay fastened underneath, which in about four or five hours is filled with as many table-spoonfuls of the juice. The produce of a number of incisions having been gathered in a large earthen vessel, is then spread in thin coatings upon moulds made of clay, and dried, layer after layer, over a fire, until the whole has acquired a certain thickness. When perfectly dry, the clay form within is broken into small fragments, and the pieces are extracted through an aperture, which is always left for the purpose. Besides the Siphonia elastica, many other American trees, belonging to the families of the Euphorbiaceæ and Urticeæ, afford excellent kinds of caoutchouc; and since it is become so valuable an article of commerce, the East Indies, and Java likewise, yield considerable quantities, chiefly from the Urceola elastica and the Ficus elastica. The Icosandra Gutta, which furnishes the gutta percha of commerce, is a native of the Eastern Archipelago and the adjacent lands. A few years since, this substance, now so celebrated and of such wide extended use, was totally unknown in Europe, for though from time immemorial the Malays employed it for making the handles of their hatchets and creeses, it was only in the year 1843 that Mr. Montgomery, an English surgeon, having casually become acquainted with its valuable properties, sent an account of it, with samples, to the Royal Society, for which he was most justly rewarded with its gold medal. The fame of the new article spread rapidly throughout the world; science and speculation seized upon it with equal eagerness; a thousand newspapers promulgated its praises; it was immediately analysed, studied, and tried in every possible way, so that it is now as well known and as extensively used as if it had been in our possession for centuries.