Feb. 1, 1886.J THE TROPICAL AGRlCULTtfRfSf* 



S&3, 



work the Excelsior up to 50 revolutions per min- 

 ute, it had better not be employed. The inference 

 clearly is that in Mr. Meggiuson's opinion, 50 

 revolutions per minute indicate the minimum of 

 movement requisit<^ for tlie proper rolling of tea 

 leaf. But to show how experts differ, we may men- 

 tion tlmt before we could transfer to paper our 

 mental note of Mr. Megginson's axiom, we received 

 a letter from the supermtendent of a factory 

 whence teas of the highest quality, judging by prices 

 obtaiutd, have been recently issued, to the follow- 

 ing effect : — 



Tea Rollixg. 



l-2th .Tan. 18S6. 



Dear Su". — In your issue of 9th instant I see an 

 iuterestin" letter " From the Hills " in which the 

 writer asks for information ic tea roUimj. Ask him 

 to try the following, with any ordinarily fine pluck- 

 iugs. I see he has a .Jackson's Roller, which I 

 consider actually necessary, to show following result. 



Say that Roll is put into the " Excelsior " at 12 

 noon ; 611 up roller as hard as cooly can drive it 

 home, set machinery agoing and keep going at rate 

 of say ^-5 i-ffoJntion-^ per minitfn for 10 minutes, gently 

 stu'ring up by hand meantime. At end of 10 mmutes 

 request Kamasamy to get up on to the top, aud 

 roll thus for other 10 minutes. Rainasamy must now 

 step down and *' Kindyoodoo " roll ; in fact ,he has to 

 get down for this purpose at least every 10 minutes 

 up to say 40 minutes after roll is put in. After it has 

 been rolled from 'Sr> to 40 minutes W'lth Ramasamy 

 swaying to and fro on top, Mgotoosamy too must 

 get "up and lend his weight. A third cooly will 

 be necessary for a short time before taking out Roll 

 at .tO minutes just to rfve it final touch or squeeze. 

 Take out of Roller and spread » iuches thick on long 

 table near window, breakup thoroughly and sift through 

 No. 3. Below No. B again spread B inches deep on 

 table and cover with blanket till fermented. Above 

 No. 3 also spread on table and keep there for one 

 hour, after which again put back into Roller, turn 

 on full water power andput^Acr coolies on top of 

 '• Excelsior " rolling thus for 1.5 minutes at same 

 rate as before *".'■. abotit 2.5 revolutions per minute. If 

 rolled as above 1 guarantee .S.5 per Cent Pekoes. 



I'.S. — If liard rolling be necess.aiy for high onttui-u 

 of Pekoes — and I consider that it is — then Jackson's 

 machinery must carry the day. 



When doctors differ so widely what are poor lay- 

 men to do? Roll 1)0 to HO revolutions per minute 

 power being available, or restrict the application 

 of power to sufficient to produce ;'••") revolutions 

 per minute? It would seem that each must ex- 

 periment and decide for himself. While slow roll- 

 ing is recommended, here we have Mr. Barber turn- 

 ing out " rolls " from his Blackstone machine in 

 12 minutes, amidst the plaudits of experts. We 

 telegraphed the result we witntscd with rather re 

 fractory leaf, and now we have the following letter 

 from Mr. Barber, the gentleman who, beginning 

 his career as a good lawyer, has, in the second 

 phase of his existence, proved himself not only a 

 good tea-maker but an ingenious and suzcessful 

 machinist : — 



Blackstone, 14th Jan. I9m. 



The leal brought from Carolina by Mr. Megginson, 

 in your presence and the leaf of Blackstone rolled 

 afterwards by Mr. Megginson were fired and this day 

 for%varded to Ifr. Megginson, who writes his opinion 

 as follows : — 



" The appearance of all is superior ; liquors are all 

 sxtisfactory. but might have been improved by 

 fuller fermentation. / am mil salisfied n-ith the. iforV of 

 the roller." 



As regards fermentation I quite endorse the state- 

 ment. The teas were fired when I was away at 

 Carolina and they seem to have hurried the work 

 through. But that does not bear on the issues. 

 —Yours truly, .Jak. H. Bauber. 



The amount of wood-fuel consmned by the Jackson 

 motive powei drieri is » serioai) matter, in the 



case of the Victoria .IJ lb. of firewood for every pound 

 of dried tea. At 2.00(1 lb. of tea per diem, which tin- 

 Carolina Factory is likely to reach, that means 7,0001b. 

 of firewood, it firewood alone continues to he used, 

 per diem, or counting a year of 5 days per week 

 at this rite, 1,820,000 lb. This result is astound- 

 ing, and we cannot now wonder at the earnest- 

 ness with which the gentlemen connected witli the 

 K. A. W. group of estates, dwelt on the import- 

 ance of forest reserves, for mere firewood purposes, 

 apart from timber for buildings and boxes. The 

 .' ■ ibagamuwa group of estates are, themselves, es- 

 pecially well off in this respect, and we hugged 

 the belief t^ nt about 70 acres of jungle belts out, 

 of 549 acies, with 15 acres more of exotic trees, 

 were more than ample, and that as our belts got 

 clear of timber they might be profitably planted up with 

 tea. We were, on the contrary, empliatically ad\'ised 

 to cultivate timber trees in our belts. But what 

 are old estates to do, where there is not firewood 

 enough even to enable the coolies to cook their 

 food? The remedy, no doubt, is two-fold :-- 



Machines ought to be improved in their con- 

 struction, so as to economize fuel ; and 



Better kinds of fuel than lirewood alone ought 

 to be employed ; such as coal or coke alone, or 

 mixed with the firewood ; or, better still, some 

 artificial fuel, of compressed paraffin, for instance, 

 embodying the maximum of caloric in the mini- 

 mum of bulk. 



Surely the time has arrived when ooal at least, 

 which costs about K20 per ton at Colombo, 

 should be used with or in lieu of wood, the 

 railway carrying large quantities at especially low 

 rates ? We hope our good, friend Mr. Grinlin- 

 ton, whose energy and faculty of organization 

 have enabled him to confer so much benefit 

 on the Colony already, will take up this question 

 in earnest. If coal could be laid down at Nauuoya, 

 at about an advance of 30 per cent on Colombo 

 prices, and at intermediate stations in proportion , 

 we should think it would be useful and eco- 

 nomical to use the black diamonds (crystallized fire- 

 wood) in tea factories. Of course the extended 

 employment of iron in buildings, and the receipt 

 of tea boxes in shooks from .Japan or elsewhere, 

 will largely help; but the grand advantage of the 

 supercession of firewood, by an imported or pre- 

 pared fuel, better and cheaper, would be to obviate, 

 not only the necessity of forest reserves on estates, 

 but to set free the large areas of Government forest 

 reserved for railway firewood purposes. If that 

 result were gained, we should speedily h.ave lines 

 of nourishing tea estates along the 25 miles between 

 the neighbourhoods of Nanuoya and the Haputalc 

 Pass, the present luioccupied state of which has 

 been most unfairly used as an argument against 

 connecting by the iron road the large populnticm of 

 Uva (170,000) with the millions in the central 

 and sonth-western portions of the island and with 

 the harbour and shipping of the capital. We hope 

 the problem of a cheap, artificial, compressed fuel 

 for steamers, locomotives and tea furnaces may 

 soon be successfully solved. 



As to the supercession of coffee by tea, the 

 process proceeds apace, and the new plant looks 

 everywhere fresh and Hourishing. That panigraph 

 from India recognizing 1 cwt. per acre as a good 

 return of cotlec, was calculated to create a sens- 

 ation, roiitru we heard of a planter in Dimbula. 

 who has paid special attention to the manuring of 

 coffee, who is now rooting out plants which yield 

 3i cwt. an acre, coffee at that Vatc and at pret-ent 

 prices not paying. In Uva and in some othei: 

 dietricts coffee may continue to do well, but the 

 main hopes of mobt plauters are, with ample juetillc- 



