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Malaya are simply larger biscuits). Instead of allowing the latex 

 to run down the tree and thus become dirty and instead of allowing 

 it to dry into a mass of dingy black rubber in a coconut shell, he 

 showed that it could be collected in little tins placed one under each 

 cut and then mixed together and coagulated with a certain 

 amount of acetic or other acid This discarded system was the 

 one adopted by Dr. Trimen in l888, and Ceylon had made no further 

 progress till 1899. The coconut shell system was never, I need 

 hardly say, used in the Botanic Gardens, Singapore, but the 

 herringbone system of tapping and the cigarette tins and saucers 

 were adopted in 1889, just ten years previously, and specimens of 

 the rubber so made had been freely distributed to many parts of the 

 world, long before Mr. Parkin made his great invention. There is 

 absolutely no suggestion as to making biscuits, sheet or any other 

 definite form in his paper at all ! 



The following is Dr. Trimen's description of his process. The 

 method followed was to smooth the surface by scraping off a little 

 bark to a height easily reached and then to make with a ^ inch chisel 

 numerous shaped incisions at the foot of the tree ; coconut cups 

 were fastened with clay and the milk conducted to them by little 

 ridges of clay. Most of the milk dried on the tree in tears. The 

 tapping was done in the afternoon. 



The real story of the " invention " of biscuits, or " pancakes " 

 of rubber as they were called, is this : When, in the Botanic Gardens, 

 Singapore, we began to tap regularly we desired to get a form of 

 rubber which dried more rapidly and kept a cleaner, brighter colour 

 and sought about for a more suitable form of vessel to set the rubber 

 in. As no funds were available for anything expensive land any 

 specially made vessel, however, simple, was too costly for our experi- 

 ments, we hit upon the common enamelled iron plate which is 

 extensively sold in Singapore, and being in common use by natives 

 was very cheap. These were found quite satisfactory, and the form 

 that the rubber took in them was that of the well-known biscuit. 

 Biscuits of rubber were made and most of them given away to 

 various persons interested in rubber, and very likely found their way 

 even to Ceylon, in about 1897. 



Sheet was made soon after, at first in a photographer's develop- 

 ing tray of fairly large size, which we happened to find in Singapore. 



In any case I cannot find anywhere that Mr. Parkin ever made 

 or thought of a single biscuit. He gives in his paper no suggestion 

 as to this whatever, beyond saying that commercial rubber can be 

 freed from moisture and putrefaction by drying it in thin sheets. 



Mr. Curtis writes in his annual report for 1898, about rubber 

 taken from the Penang trees : " A sample was submitted to Messrs. 

 Heckt, Levis and Kahn, for valuation, who reported it as beautiful 

 rubber, very well cured, worth to-day 3/3 per lb." This was tapped 



