TEA 



TEA 



635 



the main trunk, thus providing protection from the 

 cold to the tenderer stems. 



As a result of pruning, at the axis of every 

 remaining leaf there appears a tiny shoot which 

 speedily develops into a new stem equipped with 

 several leaves. From the axis of each of these 

 latter springs yet another shoot which under favor- 

 able conditions gives rise to another crop of leaf. 

 These successive productions of young foliage are 

 called "flushes," whose rapidity of recurrence 

 depends on climate, soil and systems of cultivation 

 and plucking. They afford the tea-planter the 

 opportunity of gathering the young and tender 

 leaf at frequent intervals throughout the growing 

 season. The fact that upwards of twenty pluckings 

 have been made at Pinehurst during the six months 

 of cropping is due to the picking of only a small 

 modicum of leaf from each new shoot, and the 

 'consequent readiness with which young foliage is 

 produced. A large part of the world's tea is the 

 result of a practical stripping of all the leaves 

 and a good part of the stem ; but as such deple- 

 tion removes the embryonic shoots in the axes of 

 the leaves, the power of reproduction is greatly 

 diminished. 



Plucking and prodiiction.—The plucking of leaf 

 begins with a small topping during the first year 

 after transplanting, and under favorable conditions 

 should exhibit a progressive increment for a number 

 of years. The fol'owing table shows the early 

 croppings, expressed in pounds of dry tea per acre, 

 of several sorts of tea on naturally fertile lands : 



A comparison of the production of some older 

 gardens, also expressed in pounds of dry tea per 

 acre, since the phenomenal freeze of the spring of 

 1899, affords the following : 



The plucking of the leaf generally extends in 

 this climate from the beginning of May until into 

 October, and is confined to the pekoe tip and leaves. 

 The colored children who gather the young leaves 

 as they are successively produced have occasion to 

 revisit each garden every ten days to two weeks 



during the season. By careful training they become 

 expert in their task, and easily equal, if not sur- 

 pass, the average tea-pluckers of the Orient. But 

 constant supervision as to their thoroughness is 

 requisite not only in the gardens but also at the 

 delivery of the leaf at the factory. 



The vitality of the tea plant, under favorable 

 conditions, successfully overcomes the strenuous 

 incursions of the pruner and plucker. Abundant 

 proof has demonstrated that the same plant can be 

 thus depleted for twenty-five to fifty years, without 

 serious impairment ; indeed, it is asserted that in 

 one Japanese garden the same bushes have yielded 

 high-grade leaf for two hundred years. The irregu- 

 larities in the productiveness of the older gardens, 

 as shown in the above table, are preeminently due 

 to meteorological variations. The greater yield of 

 1902 was probably due to unusually high tempera- 

 tures, the thermometrical readings having exceeded 

 100° Pahr. on several days. 



Curing and handling. 



If it is remembered that all tea-leaf must be 

 subjected to two processes, viz., rolling, to break 

 the oily cells which contain the principles valuable 

 for brewing the beverage and to spread them on 

 the surface of the leaves, and drying, to prevent 

 fermentation and decay ; that leaf thus prepared 

 constitutes green tea, the nearest approach to the 

 natural condition; and that the introduction of two 

 additional processes, — withering of the green leaf, 

 and oxidation, by exposure, after rolling, of the damp 

 leaf to the atmospheric air, produces black tea, it 

 will be readily seen how large an opportunity has 

 been given for substituting mechanical for the 

 old-time hand (and naked foot) processes of the 

 far Orient. Indeed, at the present up-to-date tea 

 factory, manual labor has been restricted to that 

 final culling which removes objectionable leaf and 

 adventitious matter. 



Intelligently to describe the many machines now 

 in use, should necessarily consume too much time 

 and space, but it may be permitted to refer to two 

 useful ones invented at Pinehurst : 



The green-tea sterilizer consists of a rotary 

 cylinder which satisfactorily sterilizes the "en- 

 zymes " or soluble oxidizing ferments in the freshly 

 plucked leaf, by directing a current of hot air (550° 

 to 600° Pahr.) against it as it falls for several 

 hundred times through the diameter of the tube on 

 its passage through the length of the latter, until 

 it is discharged in a flaccid condition, suitable for 

 rolling and no longer liable to oxidize. 



The attritionizer imparts to the dried unoxidized 

 leaf a gray color due to the friction of the par- 

 ticles of tea on each other in a current of warm 

 air, which otherwise can be secured only by adul- 

 teration with foreign and generally deleterious 

 coloring matters. 



The final mechanical process is the differentia- 

 tion of the several sizes of the dry tea particles by 

 means of sieves, and to them are given the names 

 of the leaves of the tea shoot, as if separately 

 plucked and prepared, — which is practically no- 

 where done. If not previously chopped or cut, the 



