October i, 1885.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, 



273 



Mr. C. SPEAEJIAN ARMSTRONG'S LATEST 



CONTRIBUTION TO THE LITERATURE OF 



THE TEA ENTEEPEIZE IN CEYLON. 



Surely the Colony, the (Tovernment and especi- 

 ally those engaged in the culture and manu- 

 facture of tea owe a heavy debt of gratitude to 

 Mr. Armstrong. One of the earliest pioneers of 

 the enterprize in its practical and appreciable as- 

 pect, Mr. Armstrong has brought to bear on our 

 new staple faculties keenly observant and a mind 

 singularly retentive of all valuable facts, whether 

 developed in the culture or the manufacture of 

 tea. But he has not contentend himself with stor- 

 ing up facts and jirinciples for his own use and 

 guidance. On the contrary, nothing has been more 

 conspicuous in the career of this model planter 

 and gentleman, than the frank and unreserved 

 readiness he has ever shown, at the various stages 

 in the progress of the industry, to place at 

 the disposal of his brother planters and the pub- 

 lic at large 'the results — contirmed correct or modi- 

 fied — of his accumulated experience as a tea-grower 

 and a tea-maker. In his successive papers we have 

 information on which we can rely as conscienti- 

 ously correct, including his latest deliverance to 

 the effect that from Ceylon estates tea can be 

 placed free on board at Colombo for a maximum 

 of 36 cents of a rupee i^er lb., a fair average 

 being 30 cents. Mr. Armstrong adheres to his 

 high estimates of yield, stating his conviction 

 that estates giving an average of only 300 lb. per 

 acre will be more rarely found than those which 

 yield 500 lb. He takes the sensible business \iew 

 that good, substantial pluckings, realizing average 

 prices of Is 3d to Is 6d in the London Market, 

 will, in the end, pay better than very tine pick- 

 ing with correspondingly high prices. Mr. Armstrong, 

 also, while deprecating and avoiding " odious com- 

 parisons, " holds that, after a certain period of 

 growth, the yield on elevated hill estates and low 

 valley gardens will be fairly equalized, the finer 

 tia\our of the high-grown leaf asserting itself more 

 than it seems yet to have done. If the charge 

 of optimism is brought against Mr. Armstrong, 

 he has a ready answer in the encouragement 

 which his own experience has afforded for " length- 

 ening the cords and strengthening the stakes," 

 of the well-managed and evidently profitable " con- 

 cern " he has built up on Rcokwood amidst the 

 ranges, over which the liionarch of Ceylon mount- 

 ains, Pidurutalagala, looks out, to and beyond 

 the plantations of Hewaheta. AH who have pro- 

 fited by the knowledge so freely communicated by- 

 Mr. Armstrong will cordially wish him success in 

 a degree which, the greater it is, the more they 

 will rejoice in its realization. 



A great and most valuable characteristic of 

 all Ml-. Armstrong's utterances is the candid hon- 

 esty with which he gives his opinion as to the 

 relative merits of the appliances for the manu- 

 facture of green tea leaf into the dried product, 

 which are competing for the favour of the tea 

 planters. Like the vast majority of those who 

 have practically tested the merits of varied and 

 rival machinery, Mr. Armstrong emphatically awards 

 the palm to Mr. Jackon's rollers; the Hand Roller, 

 Universal and Excelsior being good, lietter, bestj 

 only in their superior capacity for work. But, 

 when it comes to drying the "tea and sorting it, 

 he prefers Davidson's siroccos (giving his reasons) 

 for the one process and Gore's recently invented 

 33 



and very moderately priced sifter, for the other. 

 He is not blind to the merits of .Jackson's mach- 

 inery, but he evidently feels as we do that the 

 eminent tea engineer, whose inventions receive 

 such justice at the hands of Messrs. Marshall & Co. 

 of Leeds, is in no sense a cheap Jack(son). But 

 Mr. Armstrong shows his appreciation of quality, by 

 advising planters to spend their last cent, rather 

 than not have at their disposal, when the "rush" 

 crisis comes, a large, well-ventilated, well-furnished 

 factory. In justice to Mr. Armstrong's political 

 economy and financial morality, however, we feel 

 bound to point out his recommendation that the 

 last cent is only to be spent on a complete tea- 

 house and tea machinery, when it is available, in 

 gradual instalments, as yield and profit increase. 

 In the matter of a hand roller at R.500 and its 

 lierformances, however, while accepting Mr. 

 Armstrong's account of his own experience as be- 

 yond question, we feel bound to say that ours has 

 not by any means been so favourable. The roller, 

 whether worked by cooly or water-power, has done 

 its work well, but, so far from its capacity being 

 equal to 40 to .50 lb. of green leaf at a fill, 87 

 has been the maximum on an estate in which we 

 are interested. Half-an-liour, too, has been much 

 nearer than 20 minutes, to the time required for 

 rolling. Altitude, which is high, but not much 

 higher than Rookwood, may account for the longer 

 period required for the rolling; but even a gen- 

 tleman interested in the roller, to whom we left 

 the tilling of it, did not blame our leaves. We 

 fear we should require Mr. Armstrong's help to 

 get l.fiOO lb. of leaf rolled in 10 hours by the 

 hand roller. But more curious still, while Mr. 

 Armstrong is emphatic in his approval of the Uni- 

 versal roller, which costs considerably more than 

 twice the price of the hand roller, he represents 

 the former as doing 'very little more work than the 

 latter, l,(iOO lb. of green leaf rolled in a day of 10 

 hours, or 2,000 lb. if pressed. The logical conclu- 

 sion from Mr. Armstrong's statements would seem 

 to be that the owner of a tea estate should (the 

 Ceylon roller, prepared at Mr. Armstrong's recom- 

 mendation, not being ready) pass from the hand 

 roller to the Excelsior, which is stated to be cap- 

 able of rolling 8,000 lb. green leaf (the equivalent 

 of 2,000 lb. of dry) per diem. The difficulty is 

 that most coffee estates, converted into tea estates, 

 have got water-wheels of only 16 feet diameter, 

 with buckets the capacity of which was estimated 

 with reference to the friction offered liy a coffee 

 pulper. That is our difficulty, requiring as we do 

 the services of an excelsior, and during our recent 

 trip through the tea districts, this question of water- 

 wlieels and their power was a subject of special 

 interest to us. On Imboolpittia, thanks to the 

 courtesy of Mr. Hogg, we saw a wheel 21 feet in 

 diameter, but with buckets narrower even than 

 those of our 16 feet water-wheel, while the water- 

 supply did not certainly exceed that which for most 

 of the year we can command for the whole of the 

 year by means of dams; evaiwration at nearly 

 6,000 feet altitude not being great. By the help of 

 a Jiij-ulieel the Imboolpittia wheel was equal not to 

 one excelsior merely, but, we believe, to two. Then 

 on Windsor Forest and Pen-y-lan we saw. twin 

 wheels, 14 feet in diameter, but with buckets of 

 fully one-third capacity more than those of our 16- 

 feet wheel. Those 14-feet wheels turned Excelsiors 

 easily and with power to spare. Having observed 

 all this, we ventured to dispute the dictum of the 

 leading engineering house in Colombo, although en- 

 dorsed by Messrs. Jackson and Armstrong, to the 

 effect that a 16-feet water-wheel, as supplied by 

 Messrs. John Walker & Co. for working a pulper, 



