PREFATORY. 



Utility, not originality, has been aimed at in the compilation 

 of this work. The obstacles and difficulties its author had met 

 with in his endeavors to learn something of the article he was 

 commissioned to sell when he first entered the Tea trade, the 

 almost total lack of knowledge displayed by the average dealer 

 in the commodity, allied to the numerous inquiries for a work con- 

 taining " all about tea," first prompted the undertaking. 



The material was collated at intervals, in a fragmentary 

 manner, covering a period of over twenty years, and arranged 

 amid the many interruptions incident to an active business life, 

 subjected to constant revisions, repeated prunings and innumerable 

 corrections, due mainly to the varying statements and conflicting 

 opinions of admitted authorities in every branch of the subject. 

 Still, as careful and judicious an arrangement of the data has been 

 given as possible, a faithful effort being made to omit nothing that 

 may prove useful, instructive or profitable to the expert, the dealer 

 or general reader. 



Aware that many facts have been omitted, and many errors 

 committed in its preparation, he still trusts that the pains he has 

 taken to avoid both have not been in vain, that the former may be 

 few, and the latter of no great importance. The work was com- 

 piled under impulse, not under inducement, a single line not being 

 intended originally for the market, and is now being published 

 solely for the benefit of those " whom it may concern." 



PHILADELPHIA, December, 1892. 



