Balata, the product of the bullet-tree -- its milk or juice, in fact -- which is a large forest tree, ranging from Jamaica and Trinidad to Venezuela and Guiana. The tree grows to a height of 120 feet, and has a large, spreading head. A tree of average size yield three pints of milk. The milk is dried in hollow wooden trays. When it is sufficiently dry it is removed from the trays in strips and hung up on lines to harden.


Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.