AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THK 
STRAITS 
AND 
FEDERATED MALAY STATES. 
No - 6.J JUNE, 1910. [Yol. IX 
HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE RUBBER 
INDUSTRY. 
When history is written, even of such a subject as the story of 
discoveries and inventions connected with the rubber industry, it is 
advisable that it should be not only complete but accurate. We are 
led to this observation by reading certain articles in the recent 
numbers of the India Rubber Journal and India Rubber World and 
Dr. Willis’ “ Agriculture in the Tropics”. In these papers the in- 
completeness and inaccuracy lies in the account of the so-called 
re-discovery of wound-response, which it was first claimed was an 
original discovery by Messrs. Willis, and Parkin, in 1899, but later as 
a re-disccJvery of a phenomenon known to the Amazons seringueiros 
and some other points. 
The discovery that the second and later tappings of a rubber tree 
produce a greater flow of latex than the first is one that no one can 
possibly overlook who taps a tree consecutively for a few days run- 
ning and notes the result. 
In the India Rubber Journal of March 21, 1910, an account is given 
of an article in Science Progress, by Mr. Parkin, who visited Ceylon 
in 1899, but unfortunately did not visit Singapore, where he would 
have found not only a much larger collection of rubber-producing 
plants, and a much greater number of Para rubber trees of good size, 
but also that experiments in rubber tapping had been carried on for 
ten years previously, and that the phenomenon of wound-response 
had been known for many years. 
One is glad to see that he mentions the work done by Dr. 
Trimen, and the interest he took in the possibilities of profitable 
cultivation of Hevea braziliensis, for Dr. Trimen has not of late years 
received the share of credit for his work in this matter and in other 
agricultural, horticultural and botanical work that was due to him. 
