How is the Caoutchouc obtained from the Tree?

By making incisions in the trunk of the tree, from which the fluid resin issues in great abundance, appearing of a milky whiteness at first, but gradually becoming of a dark reddish color, soft and elastic to the touch.

To what use is this substance put?

The Indians make of it boots, shoes, bottles, flambeaux, and a species of cloth.  Amongst us it is combined with sulphur, forming the vulcanized rubber of commerce, which is used for many purposes.  A greater proportion of sulphur, produces vulcanite, a hard black substance, resembling jet.

     Flambeaux, torches burnt to give light.

What is Sponge?

A marine substance, found adhering to rocks and shells under the sea-water, or on the sides of rocks near the shore.  Sponge was formerly imagined by some naturalists to be a vegetable production; by others, a mineral, or a collection of sea-mud, but it has since been discovered to be the fabric and habitation of a species of worm, or polypus.

What do you mean by Polypus?

A species of animals called Zoophytes, by which are meant beings having such an admixture of the characteristics of both plants and animals, as to render it difficult to decide to which division they properly belong.  They are animal in substance, possessed indeed of a stomach, but without the other animal characteristics of blood-vessels, bones, or organs of sense; these creatures live chiefly in water, and are mostly incapable of motion:  they increase by buds or excrescences from the parent zoophyte, and if cut off will grow again and multiply; each part becoming a perfect animal.  Myriads of the different species of zoophytes reside in small cells of coral, sponge, &c., or in forms like plants, and multiply in such numbers as to create rocks and whole islands in many seas, by their untiring industry.  Polypus signifies having many feet, or roots; it is derived from the Greek.

     Myriads, countless numbers.

Whence are the best and greatest number of Sponges brought?

From the Mediterranean, especially from Nicaria, an island near the coast of Asia:  the collection of sponges forms, in some of these islands, the principal support of their inhabitants.  They are procured by diving under water, an exercise in which both men, women, and children are skilled from their earliest years.  The fine, small sponges are esteemed the best, and usually come from Constantinople; the larger and coarser sorts are brought from Tunis and Algiers, on the coast of Africa.  Sponge is very useful in the arts, as well as for domestic purposes.

What is Coral?

A substance which, like sponge, was considered as a vegetable production, until about the year 1720, when a French gentleman of Marseilles commenced (and continued for thirty years,) a series of observations, and ascertained that the coral was a living animal of the Polypus tribe.  The general name of zoophytes, or plant animals, has since been applied to them.  These animals are furnished with minute glands, secreting a milky juice; this juice, when exuded from the animal, becomes fixed and hard.