JxrwE I, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



947 



and can truly assure your many readers that there 

 is not the slightest foundation for such statement. 

 I am interest.ed, of course, in trying to get our 

 Indian teas known at home ; but I can also tell 

 you that it would be simple ruination for 119 to ad- 

 ulterate, from two very obvious reasons. 1st. It. 

 would \>f more expensive to adulterate than to send 

 out tea pure. 2ud. It would at once be fnund 

 out, and be certain ruin to the man doing it, wheiher 

 he be manager or proprietor. Your readers, of course, 

 do not know that all our boxes are conspicuously 

 m.irUed, cither by the garden name, or its moi.ogram, 

 and can be recognised by the trade, and the slightest 

 ai. tempt at any triek.s would become at once, widely 

 Unouii, and the mau or garden marked and ruined. 

 Hut the most conclusive proof that we do not ad- 

 ulterate is that it would cost more to do it than to 

 make our teas pure. It is not as though we were 

 sliort 01' bushes or leaves. Most planters know to 

 their enrrow, that we are so short-handed that it is 

 often more than we can do, to take off the so-called 

 "Hushes" of young leaf on our gardens, without 

 searching for other leaves in the jungles. The best 

 tea-seed is RloO per maund of 80tb., and 20,000 

 ei eds, eay 100 seeds for one shilling, and as the one 

 maund will plant out live acres, the cost is simply 

 nominal. Our land again at its highest rates is only 

 4s. per acre per annum, so neither of these it«ms are 

 worth speaking about. If your readers could see a 

 tea garden (and they run from 50 to 3,000 acres) a 

 huge cleau sheet of bushes in rows, 3ft. to 6ft, apart, 

 and the leaves all out in a flush, and people at their 

 wits' end to get the leaf off, they would properly 

 laugh at the idea of searching for jungley leaves in 

 the forest at ten or twenty times the cost. Coolies 

 pluck 10 11). of young leaf (which alone will roll) as 

 the day's task, but it is so easy that they .do extra, foe 

 pice, aid average 30 lb. to even (iO lb., and this -leaf 

 stands us in about 4 1b. a penny; and it takes 4 lb. 

 of the "green leaf" to make lib. of dry tea, the 

 collecting only costs us, say, Id. per lb. (Jt is 

 generally far los;'.) Next I may tell your readers 

 that, though I know the.se forests well, I don't, so 

 far, know a single leaf that can be confounded with 

 a tea-kaf, and to be able to get them at all cheap, 

 they must be planted and in the open ; ergo, why 

 not plant tea at once ! Tea and tea planters are in 

 a bad waj now here, but it is not from want of 

 leaves ; we are sufl'Lring from an overstocked market ; 

 production has so lutruu demand that it has doubled 

 in a few years, and our prices are fallen so low that 

 many estates have now for two years been worked at 

 a loss, even though we now make our teas on the 

 garden at 6'd. per lb., all costs in, and all classes alike. 

 Freights are high, and it takes as much to send 

 our teas down to Calcutta as thence home. The 

 freight of plain iron work up from Calcutta by river 

 steamer is erjual to 1 he freight from, home jjlus the 

 cost price of the iron. Again, we planters are in 

 tlie middle men's hands. We suffer from "rings," 

 and to ;rown all, the men who sell for us are also 

 the men who buy for the home trade. Can you 

 wonder we are short at our last gasp, and long to 

 sell direct to the grocer or consumer ? In my last 

 sale but one, the '' Pekoe," equal to what the 

 great advertising tirins sell at .33 only realised lOd and 

 us another lOd would p.ay duty and freight home, there 

 is a huge prolit made by these people, or the middle- 

 man, an 1 neither the planter wr.o has the hard work 

 in the jungles nor the English mechanic get their share. 

 A few men are making huge fortunes out of us, 

 especially the small coneerns. The extraordinary and 

 barefaceil lies that are lold the public by the great 

 adverising firms are simply appalling— about the best 

 tea being off the first Hush of leaf. It is the very op- 

 posite ; the first Hush is always nearly destitute of 



"tips" (or the little bright unrolled buds), and our 

 "Huslies" come out about every 12 or l(i days, from 

 May to October, the best in July or August. The 

 comical "rot" about sweeping up the "fallen leaf," 

 rotten, smothered in mud, and only seen when our 

 season is over, is — well, it's painful for a planter to read. 

 .Again, there is, not a single firm at homo, who get their 

 teas plucked for them to order ; it is absurd, but the 

 public unfortunately can't see that it is as absurd as a 

 hotel-keeper gravely saying he had a particular turbot 

 grown for his customer in the North Sea. Last year 

 and the oue before a small quantity of tea from specified 

 estates has been "bulked" — i e., mixed for the Aust- 

 ralian market, but it wns and is a necessity there, so 

 as to elucidate slight differences and be able to send a 

 stiady quality always. This is easily understood. 

 Again, your readers, perhaps, don't know that all our 

 Indian teas, without exception as tar as I knoM-, are 

 sold from the report of valuation of leaf and liquor. 

 We dare not adulterate. It it is done, it is only pos- 

 sible utter it leaves bond in England, and the chests 

 are opened by the middle-man and dealer, or grocer ; 

 and here it is we have cause of complaint, as the public 

 never taste our teas pure ; they are always mixed with 

 "China," unless got direct from the estate and in 

 original boxes with garden mark. This "mixing and 

 blending" with China may be a necessity in a tran- 

 sition stage from pure China teas to pure Indian ; none 

 the less, it is not done here for the home market — can- 

 not be ; and as for using other leaves, it is a gross 

 c.'ilumny. I defy anyone to prove such a thing of an 

 Englishman, or any English firm. Nay, more, I am 

 certain planters, though none too well ofT, would gladly 

 contribute for a big bonus to anyone who could prove 

 such a thing. The absolute purity of our tea is our 

 only hope — our sheet anchor. Wo may have hard 

 times occasionally, and many of us sink under our 

 difficulties ; but none the less, we must hold on — the 

 rigiit road, and we shall win, in the end, and China 

 die out. I can send you all about home plant, and 

 "pluck" roll, and sift and pack if you like; but first 

 T protest against the lies told of us. It speaks volumes 

 tl:at the men who sell our teas fiu' us in Calcutta posi- 

 tively decline to let us know who purchased them, or 

 the prices they realised at home in England. — .S. E. 

 Peal, tea planter, Aideo, Sibsagar, Asam. — English 

 Michanic ami World of Scienc<>, 



FIBRES AND FIBROUS MATERIALS: 

 Chin.v (Pi,uee.\) Grass; Aloe and Other Kibiies. 

 Tliere is no limit to the experiments as well as 

 the writing which the wealth of fibrous material or of 

 raw material of supposed m.arket,able value, provokes. 

 The w.ay in which information accumulates is most per- 

 plexing. A great deal of it may be of little value, be- 

 cause repeating an old story or taking up a substance, 

 the marketable unfitness or unprofitableness of which 

 has over and over again been demonstrated. This 

 accumulation of material which has had to be weeded 

 out is our excuse for not acknowledging and pub- 

 lishing some papers of interest with which we have 

 been favoured, and which have been lying by for a 

 considerable period. First, we are indebted to Mr. 

 Kay-Shuttleworth for some papers referring to China 

 grass as cultivated and the product manufactured in 

 Northern Italy, with samples obtained when on a 

 visit to San Kemo towards the end of last year. 

 These samples of the smooth silky fibre in its natural 

 colour, and of the same smooth fibre coloured to all 

 shades of tbo rainbow, rivalling silk in its fineness 

 and beauty, together with samples of cloth maun fact- 



