and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society. 



289 



TEA PACKING AND DESPATCHING. 



The first question that aiises is : Are you 

 going to bulk or not i We say decidedly, Yes, 

 of course. There are gardens that pack a few 

 chests daily (yesterday's manufacture.) The 

 idea of not leaving tea about to deteriorate is 

 au excellent one and daily packing dispenses 

 with bins— but there we think the advantages 

 terminate. You should have 



WELL CONSTRUCTED BINS 



suitable for packing a break of one grade of 

 bulked tea when packing. The work is more 

 uniform, simpler and consequently better done 

 and you can invoice, number and mark for 

 despatch right away. For a grade of tea the 

 smallest break will be twenty full chests, twenty- 

 five medium chests and thirty small or quarter 

 chests, so if you are in a small garden you 

 must have six bins 6 ft. by 5 ft. by 5 ft. to hold 

 the minimum break, each with sloping seg- 

 mented bases well lined with zinc in which tea 

 will keep quite unimpaired for at least a week. 

 So don't hesitate ; the system has so many 

 advantages. The tea is put into this bin daily 

 in small quantities, is removed by single door 

 in the base, is fired in dryers and again col- 

 lected for packing, a process that amply bulks 



s r i all breaks 



The first preliminary to actual packing is a 



GOOD SOUND FINAL DRYING 



of the tea in hand. We favour a continuous auto- 

 dryer with an automatic spreader and this 

 especially for final firing (as the last drying pro- 

 cess is termed,) as they must do more even and 

 regular work than is possible with any hand-fed 

 machine. . . Well, raise your heat till your ther- 

 mometer registers 180 u Fahr. with fan going and 

 fan inlet apertures half-open, for Souchongs and 

 Pekoes, and just closed for Brokens and Fan- 

 nings. Put on your fastest web speed, and let the 

 spreader do its own work . . . Properly fired 

 tea at this stage acquires a malty aroma, which 

 when once inhaled can never be forgotten. The 

 first tea that comes over is not expected to be 

 properly fired. You put on your fastest speed 

 merely to fill your dryer ; this full, check your 

 speed till the tea catches the malt {e.g. aroma), 

 the correct term to use, and keep the speed so 

 that the slight increase in this direction loses the 

 malt. This speed will vary a good deal, depend- 

 ing entirely on the amount of moisture contained 

 in the tea under treatment and the height of 

 the local atmospheric dew point. Having ac- 

 quired the malt, your tea will have acquired all 

 essential briskness. The maximum of briskness 

 marks the malty aroma, and, as previously 

 stated, is only suitable to teas having no pre- 

 tensions to quality. 



We have been told that all teas should be 

 packed cold; and if this is not done, the teas 

 sweat. This is quite incorrect. Always pack 

 warm, and if your teas have been tired in ac- 

 cordance with our instructions, they can con- 

 tain no moisture, and therefore cannot sweat, 

 or deposit moisture by condensation on the 

 inner side of the lead casing, so proceed fear- 

 lessly. Only neglected teas can sweat and these 

 are distinctly out of our province. 



There are two 



METHODS OF PACKING 



in general use, for the one where the chest is 

 37 



removed from the packer and put on the scale 

 when the nett tea (plus tare) is weighed into 

 the chest, the chest is shaken till the last of the 

 tea is put into it. The weighment of netts can 

 proceed much more rapidly without constant 

 adjustment of the odd ounces of tare on the 

 scale. It would further, in the case of Venesta 

 chests, which tare very accurately, dispense in 

 cases of emergency with the taring of the chests 

 before filling. The receptacle for making the 

 nett weighments referred to should of course 

 be of metal. As regards the most suitable 

 chests for the shipment of teas to the various 

 markets, chests of the Venesta type, despite 

 their extra cost, will assuredly become the chests 

 of the future. A metal chest would be the acme 

 of perfection, but of those put on the market 

 up to date all seem defective in one point or 

 another. To explain 



THE OBJECT OF TAKING 



for the English market we must glance at the 

 procedure when the package reaches England. 

 On receipt in England the package or chest is 

 weighed for gross weight and in this weighment 

 all ounces over the even pound ignored. The 

 gross weight of all packages from, say, 1291b. loz. 

 to 1291b. 15oz. is reckoned as 1291b. Having 

 weighed the gross the tea is turned out and 

 the empty chest is weighed . for tare. In this 

 weighment all ounces in excess of the 

 even pound below 8 ounces are ignored but 

 8 ounces and over are reckoned as another full 

 pound, hence a tare of 27 lb. 7 oz. is reckoned 

 as 27 lb., but a tare of 27 lb. 8 oz. and up is 

 28 lb. Over and above all this a draft of 1 lb. 

 is deducted. Now let us see how the matter 

 works out. 



The first is an example of wrong taring: — 

 Garden Weighments. London Weighments. Loudon 



actual. allows. 

 Gross 127-15 Gross 127-15 Gross 127 



Tare 27-15 Tare 127-15 Tare 28 



Nett 100-00 Nett 99 



less draft. less draft. 



You should by taring carefully on the garden 

 with dry shooks get the following results : — 



Gross 127-7 I Gross 127-5 I Gross 127 

 Tare 27-7 Tare 27-5 [ Tare 27 

 Nett 100-0 I Nett 100-0 | Nett 100 

 The object of taring is to avoid the loss as 

 shown above and careful taring materially helps 

 this result. Remember the tares of your box 

 in London must be under the half pound or you 

 will lose a pound of tea on each chest. Dougall 

 does it with wooden chests — more power to 

 him, as also the Southerner, but the latter with 

 Venestas. In these weighments your invoice 

 is ignored. 



Thea, 



— Indian Planters' Gazette, Aug. 8. 



TEO-NON, A NEW RUDDER TREE 

 FROM TONKIN. 



{Bleekrodea tonkinensis, Dub, & Eberh.) 

 Otto Stapf. 

 In the July number of last year of the Bulletin 

 Economique, published by the Director of Agri- 

 culture, Forests and Commerce of Indo-China 

 (pp._ 576-585), Dr. Th. Eberhardt, Inspector of 

 Agriculture, gave a detailed account of the oc- 

 currence of a valuable rubber tree in Tonkin, 



