THE COLORING OF GREEN TEA. 223 



the annular eclipse of May 15, 1836. That year, like: 1870, 

 was remarkable for a great display of sun-spots. As in 

 1870, they were then visible to the naked eye. I well re- 

 member my own boyish excitement when, a few. weeks be- 

 fore the eclipse of 1836, I discovered a spot upon the red- 

 dened face of the setting sun a thing I had read about, 

 and supposed that only great astronomers were privileged 

 to see. The richness of this sun-spot period is strongly 

 impressed on my memory by the fact that I continued 

 painfully watching the dazzling sun, literally "watching 

 and weeping," up to the Sunday of the eclipse, on which 

 day also I saw a large spot through my bit of smoked 

 glass. 



The previous records of these appearances of fracture of 

 the thin line of light are those of Halley, in his memoir on 

 the total eclipse of 1715, and Maclauren's on that of 1737. 

 Both of these correspond to great spot periods; the inter- 

 vals between 1715, 1737, 1836, and 1870 are all divisible by 

 eleven. The observed period of sun-spot occurrence is 

 eleven years and a small fraction. 



I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Lord Lindsay's 

 long-exposure photographs of the corona, for if they repre- 

 sent the varying degrees of splendor of this solar append- 

 age, the explanations offered in Chapter xii. of my essay on 

 " The Fuel of the Sun" will be very severely tested" by them. 

 Yours respectfully, 



W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 



Woodside Green, Croydon, January 4, 1871. 



THE COLORING OF GREEN TEA. 



THE following is a copy of my report to the Grocer on 

 a sample of the ingredients actually used by the Chinese for 

 coloring of tea, which sample was sent to the Grocer 

 office by a reliable correspondent at Shanghai (November, 

 1873). I reprint it because the subject has a general inte- 

 rest and is commonlv misunderstood: 



