140 REMARKS ON MODE OP MANIPULATION. 



or on stands in drying-houses, as is practised at 

 Canton, to restore tea which has been slightly dam- 

 aged on its passage down the country. 



Having now explained the manner in which the 

 Paochong, Souchong, and Congou teas are made 

 when manufactured with care, I feel I may have 

 impressed on the mind of the reader an exaggerated 

 sense of the difficulty of manipulating tea for the 

 European markets. Nor do I see how this was to 

 be avoided. It is surely desirable that the superior 

 methods should be known and fully described ; and 

 more especially since even the inferior modes are 

 regulated and governed by the same principles ; the 

 main difference being the more or less skill and care 

 bestowed on the several stages of the process. It 

 has been my aim so to describe every part of this 

 curious, and to us novel, art, that it may be rendered 

 useful and acceptable to the experimentalist and 

 cultivator, even at the risk of its being tedious to 

 the general reader. But it must be confessed that 

 minuteness of description, and long dwelling on the 

 superior modes of manipulation, may have the effect 

 of discouraging even the experimentalist. This, 

 however, seems to me a difficulty inherent in all 

 minute descriptions of art, even that of making 

 beer or cider. Nothing is more simple than to 

 sketch a general outline of the art of making wine ; 

 yet Chaptal devoted no less than ninety octavo 

 pages to the theory of fermentation. Agreeably to 

 this able author, if we seek a wine of high quality 



