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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We
Saw The Indians Of Carichana Operate Nearly In The Same Manner.
If, as I suppose, the accumulation and overflowing of the milk in the
jacio and the curvana be a
Pathological phenomenon, it must sometimes
take place at the extremity of the longest roots, for we found masses
of dapicho two feet in diameter and four inches thick, eight feet
distant from the trunks. Sometimes the Indians dig in vain at the foot
of dead trees; at other times the dapicho is found beneath the hevea
or jacio still green. The substance is white, corky, fragile, and
resembles by its laminated structure and undulating edge, the Boletus
ignarius. The dapicho perhaps takes a long time to form; it is
probably a juice thickened by a particular disposition of the
vegetable organs, diffused and coagulated in a humid soil secluded
from the contact of light; it is caoutchouc in a particular state, I
may almost say an etiolated caoutchouc. The humidity of the soil seems
to account for the undulating form of the edges of the dapicho, and
its division into layers.
I often observed in Peru, that on pouring slowly the milky juice of
the hevea, or the sap of the carica, into a large quantity of water,
the coagulum forms undulating outlines. The dapicho is certainly not
peculiar to the forest that extends from Javita to Pimichin, although
that is the only spot where it has hitherto been found. I have no
doubt, that on digging in French Guiana beneath the roots and the old
trunks of the hevea, those enormous masses of corky caoutchouc,* which
I have just described, would from time to time be found.
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