Forest History Society Photograph Collection
Sample Images: Brazil / FHS621th
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Image ID: FHS621
Image Date: 1904
Image Title: [The natural resources of Brazil.]
Image Caption: The Land of the Amazon: Brazil does not occupy in the Palace of Fish,
Forestry and Game the space commensurate with what that country has to exhibit, but the reason is that more space was not obtainable. The amount which could be given is filled, it may be
said, to overflowing, for the samples of woods, the skins and the other products coming under this classification encroach upon the aisles. The Amazon forests contain 2,000,000 square miles of such woods as are illustrated in the exhibits. That area of timber is ten times the size of France. In Brazilian are flora embraced more than 17,000 species, only a few of which can be displayed. Of course the rubber tree, the symphonea elastica, as the botanist calls it, leads in importance. The exhibits include huge balls of pure rubber, the milk white color of the sap having been changed by the smoke of the outdoor fire used to coagulate it. Two years ago Brazil exported nearly $40,000,000 worth of raw rubber. The entomologists, professional and amateur, find much to study and admire in the collection of Brazil. There is an emperor moth ten inches from tip to tip. The "living leaf" is a large insect the wings of which are so like the leaves of bushes that only by close scrutiny can the character be detected. Brazil shows 83 varieties of bark valued for
their tanning qualities. Many of them contain fully double the value of oak bark in tannin.
[This photo was published in "The Forest City; Comprising the Official Photographic Views of the Universal Exposition Held in Saint Louis, 1904. Commemorating the Acquisition of the Louisiana Territory" (St. Louis, Missouri: N. D. Thompson, 1904. Introduction and descriptions by Walter B. Stevens).]
Photographer: [unknown]
Use Restrictions: Permission from the Forest History Society required for any use of this image.
Repository Contact Information: Forest History Society, Inc.; 701 William Vickers Ave., Durham, NC 27701; Tel.: (919) 682-9319; Fax: (919) 682-2349.
