206 



It will thus be seen that as a matter of history the Botanic 

 Gardens of Singapore were just about ten years ahead of Ceylon 

 when Mr. Parkin first conceived the plan of making respectable 

 looking rubber instead of the messy stuff only known there till 

 1899. There is nothing whatever to show however that good 

 saleable samples of rubber were made in Ceylon as early as 1899, 

 either published or in the correspondence with Ceylon Botanic 

 Gardens in our office. 



Though Mr, Parkin was unable to visit the Singapore Gardens, 

 he obtained a good deal of information as to our work by correspon- 

 dence, as he sent a long list of questions in 1899, on the subject and 

 asked me to perform certain experiments for him. Mr. Willis writes 

 in answer, April 15, 1899 : 



'* Mr. Parkin was so busy finishing off his experiments so that 

 he had no time to answer youv kind letter about rubber in 

 Singapore before leaving for England and he asked me to do so. 



We are very much obliged for the information." Your trees 



yield much better than ours, though poorly compared with those 

 at Para, and I am inclined to think that Para rubber planting 

 will never be a big or lasting industry in the East," 



It must be remembered that rubber was at that date very low 

 in price and that we were all tapping the trees very lightly and with 

 much caution not being sure that the plant would stand the amount 

 of cutting it gets nowadays. 



Since writing the above, a copy of the Tropical Agriculturist 

 has come to hand giving Mr. Parkin's paper in Science Progress in 

 full. He modestly does not mention himself by name as the dis- 

 coverer of wound-response and the art of making clean rubber, but 

 gives the credit of the "discovery " to Mr. Willis and his scientific 

 assistant. As in Mr. Willis' various works in the history of Para 

 rubber industry no allusion is made at all to the work of the Singa- 

 pore Botanic Gardens. In Willis' " Agriculture in the Tropics " the 

 only allusion to the work done in Singapore is : " But little interest 

 was taken in the trees for about 20 years (i.e. from about 1884) except 

 by the heads of the Botanical departments in Ceylon, Java and 

 Singapore." Now all that was done between 1888 and 1896 in Ceylon 

 was to tap a single tree once a year. In Java nothing at all appears 

 to have been done as the trees in Buitenzorg were too small and 

 v/retched to offer any prospect of their being ever likely to be worth 

 cultivating. About 1894 Dr. Treub and Mr. Wigman, of the Botanic 

 Gardens, Buitenzorg, came to visit the Singapore Gardens, and 

 wished to see the rubber trees. On the first sight of the younger 

 ones Dr. Treub turned to Mr. Wigman and said, "Wigman, did 

 you ever see such trees." " No," said Wigman, " nothing like them." 

 I was surprised but found that the Buitenzorg trees were, though as 

 old, quite small and not at all encouraging in appearance. Dr. Treub 

 took the greatest interest in all economic plants, but evidently up to 



