396 
THE TR0P1CM- AtSffitSOLTURlST. [March i, 1890. 
manufacturing room air was never deemed excessive 
for withering purposes, and moreover was made the 
mo^t of, so far as it could be without calling in 
meobanieal aid. Every well-arranged factory had 
a withering loft above the manufacturing room, and 
had openings in the ceiling of the latter to allow 
the waste heat from the driers to ascend among 
the leaf. The drawback to this, however, was, that 
by not being able to remove the evaporated moiHture 
rapidly enough from the withering room, the air 
therein became saturated and evaporation was re- 
tarded in consequence. The Blackman System re- 
moves this drawbaok by rapidly removing the eva- 
porated moisture, and thus allowing evaporation to 
proceed naturally at its legitimate pace, without 
any stewing of the leaf in a saturated atmosphere. 
The few degrees of extra warmth derived from the 
waste heat of the manufacturing room give greater 
absorbing capaoity to the air drawn by the Black- 
man fans over the leaf ; and thus economize in the 
number of Blackman fans required ; as the cooler 
the air the Ipss absorbing capacity it has, and there- 
fore the more of it must be pissed over the leaf 
to produce like results in the Banie time. Hence the 
advantage of utilizing the 10 deg. or 15 deg. of heat 
obtained from the manufacturing room is a saving in 
fan-power, without any loss of speed ; as compared 
with using the colder external air and more fan- 
power. Supposing the external air is at 80 deg., and 
the manufacturing roam air at 90 deg. to 95 deg. that 
is 10 deg. to 15 deg. above the external air; it will 
be evident, that whilst the evaporating power under 
well-known laws is considerably increased by this 
gain of 10 deg. to 15 deg. there can be none of the 
risks of over-heating which attend td the old-fashioned 
methods of artificial withering. Further that as com- 
pared with the old-fashioned methods, the Blackman 
System properly applied is, as a matter of fact, a system 
of cool withering, carried to the utmost perfection 
practice will allow. 
One word more. You also ask "Ceylon planters who 
have tried the Blackman fan for withering to kindly 
favour you with the results." A note of warning is 
required here. The Blackman fan is not the Black- 
man system of withering, and those who order a 
Blackman fan or fans, and think that they have only 
to erect them aud start them to gain all the ad- 
vantages of the Blackman system, will probably 
take unnecessary expense and trouble to find 
out the distinction 1 have just made. The move- 
ment of large volumes of air (with due regard 
to all the local conditions, such as dimensions of 
withering room, position of doors, windows, souroes 
of heat, shafting, motive-power, existing arrange- 
ment of trays, &c.) to be carried out efficiently and 
economically require the advice of thoso who have 
made a special study of the soience of moving air' 
in large volumes, and who have the results of past 
vast experience at their command. The Blackman 
Company realize the importance of this so well that 
they gladly supply working plans and estimates 
gratis, on receipt of the particulars given above ; as 
then suooesB oan be insured at the minimum oost. 
Before accepting the opinion of any user of Black- 
man fans, it is well, therefore, to first of all ascer- 
tain, if those fans have been erected according to 
the Blackman Withering System under advice from 
headquarters, or, if they have been merely erected 
as prompted by more or less intelligent guess-work. 
In the latter case success or failure is a matter of 
chance with the odds largely in favour of failure ; 
in the former, success is a scientific certainty. 
Peripatetic Planteb. 
Tjba has now almost entirely displaced coffee in 
Ceylon, and from a recent review of the administra- 
tion of the Travancore State, it appears that 
the substitution iB also taking place in Southern 
li,dia- Within the last three years several coffee 
estates have been abandoned chiefly on account of 
the leaf disease, and as a result the value of 
the exports of tea has been doubled, having risen 
from If. lakhs to over 3 laks of rupees. — Pioneer. 
SUGAR AND HEMP FROM PALMS. 
Some palm trees furnish a sweetening juice. 
The most famous of these is probably the Areng, 
or sugar palm of Amboyna (Arenga saccharifera) 
which grows in India and the Archipelago. It is 
a superb tree, with pinnate leaves twenty-five feet 
long and is as handsome as it is useful. A num- 
ber of species belonging to the different genera 
furnish a kind of hair of finer or coarser texture. 
It is found in the fibrous sheaths of the leaf- 
stalk and in the jagged edges of the leaves. 
Cables made of the black, tough fibres of the 
Areng are preferred by the ooasting sailors of the 
Spanish colonies on account of their elasticity and 
durability : and they are, moreover, very fine. The 
hemp palm of Japan and {Chammrops exceha) is 
available in the hands of the industrious people 
of those countries for making the finer brooms, 
light strings, and a thousand articles of daily use. 
Palms of coarser fibre, like the Piocaba of Brazil 
(Leopoldinia piassaba), furnish material for blinds, 
brushes, broomB, and the rollers of mechanical 
sweepers, which are much more durable than 
rollers fitted with steel teeth.— Popular Science 
Monthly. 
♦ 
THE TREATMENT OF TEA IN LONDON; 
Messrs. William Walker and Sons, of Aberdeen, 
have made a communication to Mr. Ooschen upon 
the subject of the treatment of tea on hndinsr. They 
point out that to bring about any change wbich would 
have a permanent benefit on the revenue and the trade 
the first step must be to reduce the pressure on the 
Customs officials by separating teas brought into Britain 
for exportation from teas prepared and intended for 
consumption in Britain. 
Say Messrs. Walker :— On the first there need be 
no Customs outlay or expense incurred ; they can pagg 
into a warehouse — unweigbed, unmarked, aid un- 
examined ; while with regard to tho°e teag prepared 
tor home consumption, we believe that it would be 
better for all concerned that the duty were levied on 
landing at the ship's side, on each chop, mark, or 
invoice, upon some equitable basis of an approxi- 
mation of the weight, thus insuring at once that 
studied care of the contents and condition of every 
package in which the present system so lamentably 
fails, and leaving to the grower, importer, or mer- 
chant, at his own time and in his own way, the 
weighing, marking, opening, sampling, taring, and sell- 
ing of the tea. 
To give an illustration regarding 1 the present method 
of ascertaining weights, let us take a parcel of eighty 
chests of some specially prepared Indian tea. These 
chests have all been made of the exact same measure- 
ment, but the wood used is of varied kinds and 
densities, the result being that while the chests will 
vary in weight from 6 lb. to 8 lb. each, the net weight 
of tea in each chest will not vary as many ounces. 
Then as to sampling, by the present system the 
Customs officials allow tea of greatly inferior character 
to be substituted for tea taken from the chest: in a 
lot of some thirty chests there will oft«n be six or 
eight _ chests, in each of which will be found bass 
containing one or two pounds of rubbish not worth 
a tithe of the price paid. Is such a' system equitable 
or just, or ought it to be countenanced by public officials ? 
But we should weary you by the instances we 
could furnish of the varied processes practised at 
present in the impo ration and sale" of tea in 
London, all of which tend to the result of severely 
injuring the quality, greatly reducing its money value 
aud gradually undermining that taste for fine tea which 
has been and is the notable characteristic of the 
great middle and humbler orders. 
The system of turning out on the floor of a dirty 
warehouse every package of tea that happens to 
have been brought home in chests of irregular tares 
not only entails enormous expense, but permanently 
