282 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 



It is possible, therefore, that some improvement will 

 now be accomplished.* 



But at the CRUTCHED FRIARS Warehouse (belonging to 

 the East and West India Docks) a great advance has 

 already been made. The Tea there is now bulked, and re- 

 packed by machinery. The Directors most kindly invited 

 me to come and witness the process. I went, and was 

 more than pleased with what I saw. The machinery, and 

 all connected with the process, is so well described in in 

 article in the Home and Colonial Mail, I cannot do better 

 than give it here : 



TEA BULKING AT THE EAST AND WEST INDIA DOCK COMPANY'S 

 WAREHOUSES, IN CRUTCHED FRIARS. 



IT is not a little strange that the importance of effecting improve- 

 ments in the present system of Tea bulking, which has exercised the 

 minds of Tea growers and importers so much of late, should have 

 hitherto been neglected or ignored by the proprietors of the various 

 bonded warehouses in London wherein the Tea is bulked and stored. 

 That Tea may be, and only too commonly is, bulked by an antiquated 

 and unsatisfactory process is a fact which is well known to all who are 

 interested in the matter. How this result is arrived at will be seen 

 later on ; at present we desire to show that at least at one warehouse 

 the question has received the attention which it deserves, and to 

 explain, so far as may be possible, the steps which have been taken in 

 the matter. 



It is, then, that old and powerful body, the East and West India 

 Dock Company, who have taken up the matter. At the instance of 

 Mr. Du Plat Taylor, the able and energetic secretary of the company, 

 supported by the equally energetic warehouse superintendent, Mr. 

 Robert Adams, the arrangements for bulking Tea at the warehouse of 

 the Company have been very greatly improved. More than this ; 

 there has been invented and set up a special and very ingenious 

 machine for the bulking of Tea in a manner which avoids all the fail- 

 ings of the old system. What this machine is, and what its peculiar 

 merits are, will best, and perhaps only, be clearly understood by a 



* Since I wrote the above the Customs have framed new rules for Indian 

 Teas. The absurd tare system is done away with. 



