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was sent to “ call the rubber ” two or three days beforehand. At this 
date, twenty years since I commenced tapping the rubber trees I 
cannot remember when I actually discovered the wound-response for 
myself. 
Many planters and agriculturists, and Dr. Trimen himself, visited 
the Gardens in these early days, and the advantages of rubber as a 
crop was urged on them. They were shown the trees, system of 
tapping and specimens, and the necessity of “calling the rubber 
before collecting in bulk was explained to them, and they often 
carried away with them samples of the prepared 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 rubber tree. 
Mr. Wright, in talking of Mr. Willis’ discovery of 
“ wound-response ”, ( this word indeed seems to have been invented 
by Mr. Parkin or Willis, but it do£s 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 botanical interest. I 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 of value, but at present we are not much wiser to-day 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 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 Govern- 
ment 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. 
Biscuits. 
Mr. Willis, in his Agriculture in the Tropics, gives so odd an 
account of Mr. Parkin’s invention 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 coagulat- 
ing rubber into “biscuits” the form in which the bulk of the cultivated 
Para Rubber has hitherto appeared on the market, (for the sheets of 
