Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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(* Thus, At
Five Or Six Inches Depth, Between The Roots Of The Hymenea Courbaril,
Masses Of The Resin Anime (Erroneously Called Copal) Are Discovered,
And Are Sometimes Mistaken For Amber In Inland Places.
This phenomenon
seems to throw some light on the origin of those large masses of amber
which are picked
Up from time to time on the coast of Prussia.) As it
is observed in Europe, that at the fall of the leaf the sap is
conveyed towards the root, it would be curious to examine whether,
within the tropics, the milky juices of the urticeae, the
euphorbiaceae, and the apocyneae, descend also at certain seasons.
Notwithstanding a great equality of temperature, the trees of the
torrid zone follow a cycle of vegetation; they undergo changes
periodically returning. The existence of the dapicho is more
interesting to physiology than to vegetable chemistry. A
yellowish-white caoutchouc is now to be found in the shops, which may
be easily distinguished from the dapicho, because it is neither dry
like cork, nor friable, but extremely elastic, glossy, and soapy. I
lately saw considerable quantities of it in London. This caoutchouc,
white, and greasy to the touch, is prepared in the East Indies. It
exhales that animal and fetid smell which I have attributed in another
place to a mixture of caseum and albumen.* (* The pellicles deposited
by the milk of hevea, in contact with the atmospheric oxygen, become
brown on exposure to the sun. If the dapicho grow black as it is
softened before the fire, it is owing to a slight combustion, to a
change in the proportion of its elements.
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