Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1884 — India Rubber Trees. [ARTICLE]

India Rubber Trees.

The belt of land around the globe 500 miles south of the equator abounds in trees producing the gum of India rubber. They can be tapped for twenty successive seasons without injury; and the trees stand so close that one man can gather the sap of eight in a day, each tree yielding on an average three daily. Forty-three thousand of these trees have been counted in a tract of country thirty miles long and eight miles wide. There are in America and Europe more than 150 manufactories of India rubber articles, employing some 500 operatives each, and consuming more than 10,000,000 pounds of gum per year, and the business is considered to be in its' infancy. But to whatever extent it may increase, there will still be plenty of material to supply the demand.— Floral World.