255 



cultural Bulletin of the Straits and F.M.S., ix., 1910, p. 202). To obtain 

 it "the trees were tapped in the herring-bone method," and the latex 

 was collected in cigarette tins and allowed to coagulate naturally 

 "in the tins without the use of acid" {Agricultural Bulletin of the 

 Straits and F.M.S., ix., 1910, p. 202). A pruning knife and a narrow 

 flat chisel seem to have been the implements used in tapping: 

 with the knife the first cut was made, and the repeated shav- 

 ing was done with the chisel, a wooden mallet being used to drive it 

 forward. One piece of rubber made in these early tappings is 

 preserved in the Botanic Gardens, Singapore, as well as a second of a 

 slightly later date made when saucers were used for coagulation. 



Again in the year 1889 an attempt was made to get rubber 

 from the Kwala Kangsar trees, but with no greater success than 

 before, apparently because the herring-bone incision was not wide 

 6nough and not reopened, being just an imitation of the method of 

 tapping for Ipoh juice. The great success came in that year — not at 

 Kwala Kangsar. but was Mr. Ridley's. His resort to reopening the 

 wounds was indeed second only in importance as regards the planter 

 to the actual introduction of Hevea into the Old World, and after it 

 the greatest advance that had been made in rubber since the inven- 

 tion of vulcanisation. 



As said above, Collins wrote in 1872 of herring-bone tapping 

 extending high up the trees with a large number of side cuts ; the 

 plan of Ridley's first tappings seems to have been taken from those 

 tappings, although the vertical channel was generally only two feet 

 long^ and to have been variable in extent and in the number of the 

 side cuts ; but fearing that the wounds would not heal he ceased the 

 re-opening when the side cuts had a width of half an inch ; and the 

 next herring-bone was made in a new place (vide Agricultural Bulletin 

 af the Malay Peninsula, No. 7, 1897, p. 136). Considerable experience 

 seems to have been obtained between this commencement and the 

 date (1897) of the Bulletin just quoted, which indicates a not in- 

 considerable amount of tapping. 



This tapping used to be done in the evening, the cups being left 

 on the trees through the night, after the fashion described by Collins 

 on page 8 of his Report on the Caoutchouc of Commerce. 



In 1895 Dr. J. C. Willis having succeeded Dr. Trimen, the course 

 of the work in Ceylon changed. Dr. Willis tapped again without 

 waiting a year, the tree which Dr. Trimen had been tapping in every 

 other year, and reported that he judged it, at nineteen years, old enough 

 to be tapped annually ; he commented by estimating the yield of trees 

 such as it at lOO lbs. per annum from an acre carrying fifty trees. 

 Though bolder tapping was now coming in, the implements were 

 " a % inch chisel, a wooden mallet .... and a knife." Dr. Willis'^ 

 method of tapping was described by him in a Circular of the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens (No. 4, 1898, p. 30) thus: — " the tree is first carefully 

 and lightly shaved with the knife from the height of six feet down to 

 the ground ; .... a clay gutter is next made round the tree about 



