214 TEA AND SILK FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 



within, the tea would inevitably acquire an earthy taint from 

 the damp ground on which the packages may rest ; a repulsive 

 flavour from the strong cookery of the villages where the coolies 

 stop for the night, and even retain an unpleasant memento of 

 the unclean skins of the bearers. Indian tea, not being usually 

 transported any considerable distance by coolie labour, runs less 

 risk of contamination from this sort, but it was at one time, and 

 may even now, be occasionally threatened by a still more for- 

 midable foe, unknown to consignments from China. In antici- 

 pation of the season there, a number of our finest steamers are 

 generally in port ready to load, and as they get full cargoes of 

 tea without the necessity of embarking other produce, contamina- 

 tion, except from stress of weather or leakage, can scarcely occur. 

 But tea being comparatively a small product among the numerous 

 industrial fruits of our Indian empire, it is of necessity some- 

 times associated on the voyage home with a miscellaneous 

 cargo, such as hides, horns, gums, hemp, jute, linseed, and other 

 strongly-smelling animal and vegetable substances, which are 

 apt to ferment during the passage and even to decay. The fetid 

 gas arising therefrom permeates the ship's hold, and the earliest 

 and principal victim is any tea which may be stored there. 

 Thus, Indian tea, like human beings, may suffer deterioration 

 from evil companionship, and not being fortified by a powerful 

 perfume like its Chinese rival, falls an easy prey to foul vapour 

 which the other, armed with its rich scent, successfully defies. 

 It will be evident, therefore, that perfuming tea is due to com- 

 mercial prudence and forethought for its future condition on the 

 part of the Chinese, quite as much as from any desire to enhance 

 its value. 



Suppose the scenting process complete, each sieve is now 

 heaped up with tea and placed on the top of the firing basket. 

 During the progress of this final heating, which lasts for two 

 hours, the workman frequently stirs the tea, and at length makes 

 an opening in the centre of the mass to facilitate the radiation of 

 heat and escape of vapour. Sometimes a paper cone is likewise 

 introduced to act as a chimney, but this seems necessary only 

 when the air happens to be loaded with moisture. 



It would be impossible to secure uniformity of quality in a 

 chop, consisting of say from one hundred to five hundred pack- 

 ages, unless the whole had been previously mingled together. 

 Tea is so exceedingly susceptible to outward influences, as has 

 just been shown, that scarcely two chests would turn out pre- 

 cisely alike, even although the leaves had been plucked from 

 contiguous bushes in the same garden, and manipulated by the 

 same workmen, under the same apparent circumstances, if packed 

 at once on leaving the firing chamber. The necessity for care- 

 fully bulking will be all the more obvious when it is explained 



