02 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



,tho chief, value of its knowledge was that in 

 early de.j'&."<a few ignorant people who at- 

 "fcetoptecf to tap a tree one day, and did not 

 find the rush of latex at first that they ex- 

 pected thought, till they knew of it, their trees 

 were useless. Should we, however, find out 

 the real meaning of it, we might gain some 

 knowledge of the functions and physiology of 

 latex which could not fail to be of value; but at 

 present we are not much wiser today on this 

 subject than we were in 1890. 



Mr, Parkin's original paper, published in 

 Ceylon circular 12-14 June, 1899, was one of 

 considerable value, although many of the facts 

 were already known to those who had been 

 studying rubber for some years. 



Unfortunately, in those early days of Singa- 

 pore, it was almost impossible to get any agri- 

 cultural research work published in any reason- 

 able time. We had to depend on the services 

 of the Government Printing Press, which was 

 so full of work that papers took any time from 

 six to eighteen months to get printed, and we 

 had, as before remarked, too small a vote to 

 spend acent on printing from our funds. 



Biscuits. 



Mr Willie, in his Agriculture in the Tropics, 

 gives so odd an account of Mr Parkin's inven- 

 tion of Biscuits that it is worth quoting : — 

 "Not only did Mr Parkin work out the wound- 

 response and thus change what appeared to be 

 only a moderately remunerative industry into 

 a very profitable one, but he also worked out 

 the way of coagulating rubber into " biscuits " 

 the form in which the bulk of the cultivated 

 Para Rubber has hitherto appeared on the 

 market, (for the sheets of Malaya are simply 

 larger biscuits). Instead of allowing tho 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 cocxmut shell, he 

 showed that it could be collected in little tins 

 placed one under each cut and then mixed to- 

 gether and coagulated with a certain amount of 

 acetic or other acid." 



This Discarded System 



was the odo adopted by Dr. Trimen in 1888, 

 and Ceylon had made no further progress till 

 1899. The coconut shell system was never, 1 

 need hardly say, used in the Botanic Gardens, 

 Singapore, but the herringbone system of 

 tapping and the cigarette tins and saucers 

 were adopted iu 1889, just ten years pre- 

 viously ; 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 sug- 

 gestion 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 f inch chisel numerous shaped 

 incisions at the foot of the tree; coconut cups 

 were fastened with clay and the milk conducted 

 to th em by little ridges of clay. Most of the 

 milk dried on the tree in tears. The tapping 

 was clpne 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, Singa- 

 pore, 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 and any specially made 

 vessel, however simple, was too costly for our 

 experiments, we hit upon the common enameled 

 iron plate which is extensively solil in Singa- 

 pore, and being in common use by natives was 

 very cheap. These wore found quite satisfac- 

 tory, and the form that the rubber took in 

 them was that of the well known biscuit. Bis- 

 cuits 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 photo- 

 grapher's developing 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 Hecht, 

 Levis and Kahn, for valuation, who reported 

 it as beautiful rubber, very well cured, worth 

 today 3/3 per lb.' This was tapped and col- 

 lected in tins which he describes nearly two 

 years before Mr Parkin discovered the method 

 of making it in this manner, and it was by no 

 means the first sample sent home to the rubber 

 dealers from the Straits. 



Rubber grown by Mr Tan Chay Yan, the first 

 practical rubber planter in the Colony, was 

 exhibited at the Malacca show in 1898. This 

 was the first Para rubber shown for competi- 

 tion from the Straits. It was grown in Malacca 

 at Bukit Lintang. 



In Mr Derry's report of Government Planta- 

 tions in Perak 1897, he says : — 



" Many trees have been tapped and a report on the 

 work submitted. The rubber obtained is not yet suffi- 

 ciently smoked for sending home, but samples have been 

 valued in Mincing Lane at 2s 8d and 3s a pound and 

 considered equal to the best Brazilian produced rubber 

 and also worth Is a pound more than that usually sent 

 home from the Straits. He gives also a number of figures 

 of returns from trees of various ages." 



He sent home in 1899 the first large parcel 

 of Para rubber from the Malay Peninsula ; it 

 realised £61 Is 6d. 



Willis' 'Agriculture in the Tropics,' which we 

 do not intend to review here, only gives an ac- 

 count of Tropical Agriculture as seen in Ceylon. 

 Economic plants not cultivated or of importance 

 there are scrappily and often inaccurately de- 

 scribed (e.g. Sago, Ipecacuanha.) It is appa- 

 rently not intended for a general work on Agri- 

 culture in the tropical regions, and this is 

 doubtless the reason why the work with Para 

 rubber done in the Straits Settlements is entirely 

 ignored. Unfortunately it is clear from the 

 journals which quote from it that the readers 

 are under the impression that the account 



