204 
Malaya are simply larger biscuits). Instead of allowing the latex 
to run down the tree and thus become dirty afid instead of allowing 
it to dry into a mass of dingy black rubber in a coconut shell, he 
showed that it could be collected in little tins placed one under each 
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 
herringbone system of tapping and the cigarette tins and saucers 
were adopted in 1889, just ten years previously, 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 suggestion 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 % 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 rubber 
in. As no funds were available for anything expensive land any 
specially made vessel, however, simple, was too costly for our experi- 
ments, we hit upon the common enamelled iron plate which is 
extensively sold in Singapore, and being in common use by natives 
was very cheap. These were found quite satisfactory, and the form 
that the rubber took in them was that of the well-known biscuit. 
Biscuits 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 photographer’s develop- 
ing 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, 
u Heckt, Levis and Kahn, for valuation, who reported it as beautiful 
mbber - ver T well cured, worth to-day 3/3 per lb.” This was tapped 
