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THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [fattanm h 1884. 



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WOOD FOR TEA CHESTS. 



We take over from the Madras Mail a very im- 

 portant memorandum by Dr. Watt upon the above 

 subject, but Dr. Watt being as yet no more perfect 

 than the tea machiucry of which he apeaks so dis- 

 paragingly, we are tempted to give his article a 

 little touch up with our critical whip, before discours- 

 ing upon its really excellent points. As we read we 

 cannot help feeling as though the writer had, for some 

 reason or other, a secret animus against the unfort- 

 unate tea-planter : otherwise it is hard to explain the 

 raison d'etre of such sentences as these : — " The fault 

 may not improbably rest with the planter himself ; " 

 "tea-planting, including the out-door work, as well as 

 the curing at the present date seems to be in the 

 same position as brewing was in Europe half-a- century 

 ago;" "the preparation of tea upon a scientific prin- 

 ciple seems a not very distant future." The last re- 

 mark would have called forth more gratitude, per- 

 haps, had a little explanation of its meaning been 

 added. As it stands, we may assert that no planter, 

 with any true ambition in his soul, desires that in 

 the near or distant future, all teas, whether Assam, 

 Darjeeling, Ceylon, or Java, shall be made on so 

 scientific a principle that the state of the market alone 

 would determiue whether they should all alike obtain 

 2s 6d per lb. or Is 6d per lb. All need for exercis- 

 ing one's own wits and all healthy rivalry would be 

 put an end to, and the planter would become merely 

 part of the necessary estate machinery. 



Again, if the Government of India have correctly 

 reported Dr. Watt, his style of composition is capable 

 of improvement. He says that " the Indian tea-chests 

 are as carefully made in India as in China " ; that 

 "it may be the tea itself which corrodes the metal 

 and not the wood " (what he means is that " it may 

 be the tea itself, and not the wood, which corrodes 

 the metal'") ; and he " had the pleasure of inspecting 

 lead said to have been corroded through the action of 

 the wood." This is like the editor who "regretted 



to say that his report of the death of Mr. turned 



out to be incorrect, that gentleman being in his usual" 

 &c, &o. 



We, now, have the pleasure (real, this time) of 

 noticing the very valuable results obtained by Dr. 

 Watt from his experiments with wood and lead, and 

 we are sure all planters will join in a vote of thanks 

 to him for his trouble. The most important result 

 obtained is certainly that he " failed utterly to dis- 

 cover any wood which seemed to possess the least 

 chemical action upon lead." If further researches 

 thoroughly establish this fact, the advantage accruing 

 to the planting community will be that inferior timber 

 woods, hitherto rejected for their supposed corrosive 

 properties, will go to swell the supply needed to 

 meet the great demand, which is at present made 

 upon the better species of timber trees for the con- 

 struction of tea-boxes. The damping of the wood 

 experimented upon was a much severer test than, wc 

 trust, tea-boxfs usually lave to undergo, but it did 

 good in conclusively proving that the damp in the 

 wood escapi s into the outer atmosphere and does not 

 penetrate through the lead, unless, of course, there 

 be boles in the latler through careless Soldering or 

 other cause?. In this connection we here insert an 

 extract from a Darjeeling letter which we have just 

 come across in the Indigo and Tea Planters' Gazette : — 



While on tiir subject of tea, I may as well mention a 

 new Lining for tea boxes, which has been patented by Mr. 

 Linberry.of the Dooktaloo tea estate. Every practical man 

 knows that the had lining at present universally employed 

 in this country is expensive, and at the best, unsatisfact- 

 ory. Mr. Liuberry's casing is made of the Willesden 

 waterproof paper, lined on the inside with tin foil. It is 

 claimed for this invention that it is absolutely trater-tignfc, 

 cobts much less than the sheet lead; can be slipped into 



