Every generation is wisest in its own conceit, and the present is continually overrated at the expense of the past. Who would have thought that India rubber cloaks were worn in South America upwards of a century since? yet such, forsooth, is the plain fact of history; and disinclined as we are to rob Mr. Macintosh of the merit of his adaptation, the invention must be awarded to another age; indeed, it is almost one of the antiquities of the New World. In a work entitled La Monarchia Indiana, printed at Madrid in 1723, we find a chapter devoted to "Very profitable trees in New Spain, from which there distil various liquors and resins." Among them is described a tree called ulquahuill, which the natives cut with a hatchet, to obtain the white, thick, and adhesive milk. This when coagulated, they made into balls, called ulli, which rebounded very high, when struck to the ground, and were used in various games. It was also made into shoes and sandals. The author continues:—"Our people (the Spaniards) make use of their ulli to varnish their cloaks, made of hempen cloth, for wet weather, which are good to resist water, but not against the sun, by whose heat and rays the ulli is dissolved."

India rubber is not known in Mexico at the present day by any other name than that of ulli. And the oiled silk covering of hats very generally worn throughout the country by travellers is always called ulli.