Ulli: the first European accounts of rubber, from Oviedo's batey chapter to the holquahuitl of the Mexican materia medica

Two Spanish books describe an elastic solid Europe had no word for. Oviedo, on Hispaniola, watches balls of boiled roots and juices bounce higher than Spain's air-filled balls, and reasons from the bounce why players strike with hip and shoulder, not hand. Hernández's Mexican materia medica of 1615 names the tree and the word — holli, corrupted to ule — and files the gum under medicine. Neither turns it into anything, and the chapter praising the players is written when almost none are left.