and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— August, 1911. 178 



necessity of "calling the rubber " before collect- 

 ing in bulk, was explained to tbem, and they 

 often carried away with them samples of the pre- 

 pared rubber. Many of them came from Ceylon 

 or had intimate relations with Ceylon. All this 

 was going on some years before Mr Willis or Mr 

 Parkin came to the East at all, or had seen a rub- 

 ber tree. Mr Wright, in talking of Mr Willis' 

 discovery of "wound-response,'' (this word in- 

 deed seems to have been invented by Mr 

 Parkin or Dr. Willis, but it does not occur in 

 Parkin's first account of his experiments) 

 says that it is of great practical importance 

 in rubber cultivation, and also of great botani- 

 cal interest. 1 fail to see where the great 

 practical importance comes in, at present ; we 

 knew of it all along, and the chief value of its 

 knowledge was that in early days a few ignorant 

 people who attempted to tap a tree one day, 

 and did not find the rush of latex at first that 

 they expected, 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 ol 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 June 

 12-14, 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 

 Singapore, it was almost impossible to get any 

 agricultural research work published in any 

 reasonable 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 a cent on printing from our funds. 



[Then comes the real story of the first " Bis- 

 cuits "or " Pancakes." — j.f.] 

 Biscuits. 



Mr. Willis, in his Agriculture in the Tropic*, 

 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 ap- 

 peared to be only a moderately remunerative 

 industry into a very profitable one, but he 

 also worked out the way of coagulating rub- 

 ber into 'biscuits' the form iu which the 

 bulk of- the cultivated Para Rubber has hither- 

 to appeared on the market, (for the sheets of 

 Malaya are simply larger biscuits), Instead of 

 allowing the latex to run down thejtree, and thus 

 become dirty, coagulating into a mass of dingy 

 black rubber in a coconut shell, he showed that it 

 could be collected in little tins placed one under 

 the other, 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 1888, 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 herring- 

 bone system of tapping and the cigarette tins 

 and Baucers were adopted in 1889, just ten years 

 revjpusly, and specimens of the rubber so made 

 ad been freely distributed to maDy parts of the 



world, long before Mr. Parkin made his great in- 

 vention. There is absolutely no suggestion as to 

 making biscuits, sheet or any other definite form 

 in his paper at all 1 



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 rub- 

 ber in. As no funds were available for anything 

 expensive and any specially made vessel, how- 

 ever simple, was too costly for our experiments, 

 we hit upon the common enamelled iron plates 

 which are extensively sold in Singapore,and being 

 in common use by natives were very cheap. These 

 were found quite satisfactory, and the form that 

 the rubber took in them was that of the well- 

 kuown biscuit. Biscuits of rubber were made 

 and most of them given away to varioue 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 de- 

 veloping tray of fairly large size, which we hap- 

 pened to find in Singapore. In any case I can- 

 not 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 

 sayinor that commercial rubber can be freed from 

 moisture and putrefaction by drying it in thin 

 sheets. »tr. Curtis writes in his annual report for 

 1898, about rubber taken from the Penang trees : 

 " A sample was submitted to Messrs. Heoht, 

 Lewis and Kahn, for valuation, who reported it 

 as beautiful rubber, very well cured, worth to- 

 day 3/3 per lb." This was tapped and collected 

 in tins which he describes nearly two years be- 

 fore Mr. Parkin discovered the method of mak- 

 ing 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 5Tan, the first 

 practical rubber planter in the Colony, was ex- 

 hibited at the Malacca Show in 1898. This was 

 the first Para rubber shown for competition 

 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 sufficiently 

 smoked for sending home, but samples have been 

 valued in Mincing Lane at 2/8 and 3/- a pound 

 and considered equal to the best Brazilian pro- 

 duced rubber and also worth 1/- 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 1 6, 



