The Icosandra Gutta is a large high tree, with a dense crown of rather small dark green leaves, and a round smooth trunk. The white blossoms change into a sweet fruit, containing an oily substance fit for culinary use. The wood is soft, spongy, and contains longitudinal cavities filled with brown stripes of gutta percha. The original method of the Malays for collecting the resin consisted in felling the tree, which was then placed in a slanting position, so as to enable the exuding fluid to be collected in banana leaves. This barbarous proceeding, which from the enormous demand which suddenly arose for the gutta would soon have brought the rapidly rising trade to a suicidal end, fortunately became known before it was too late, and the resin is now gathered in the same manner as caoutchouc, by making incisions in the bark with a chopping knife, collecting the thin, white, milky fluid which exudes in large vessels, and allowing it to evaporate in the sun or over a fire. The solid residuum, which is the gutta percha of commerce, is finally softened in hot water, and pressed into the form of slabs. Grutta percha has many properties in common with caoutchouc, being completely insoluble in water, tenacious, but not elastic, and an extremely bad conductor of caloric and electricity. The name of vegetable leather which has been applied to it, gives a good idea both of its appearance and tenacity. Its uses are manifold. It serves for water-pipes, for vessels fit for the reception of alkaline or acid liquids which would corrode metal or wood, for surgical implements, for boxes, baskets, combs, and a variety of other articles. The wonder of the age, submarine telegraphy, could hardly have been realised without it, as it is only by being cased in so isolating a substance, and one so impermeable by water, that the metallic wire is able to transmit the galvanic stream through the depths of ocean from land to land.