May i, 1890.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 
739 
indulgence in this " devils' drink ! " Even in the time 
of the first George its use had not gone beyond a few 
of the wealthy citizens and nobles. Malt liquor continued 
to be, even to a later date, the ordinary beverage, and 
the Queen's Maids of Honour were at the time limited 
to an allowance of one quart of beer each for breakfast 
and another at dinner. Despite t his public denunciation 
of the leaf from the flowery land, and notwithstanding 
its fabulous price, it grew in public favour until it 
became a fashionable beverage. In the first quarter 
of the present century, it was sold by chemists at a 
guinea a pound, and when in 1834 the Cnina trade, 
until then in the hands of the East India Company, 
was thrown open to private enterprise, the price fell 
to 10s. a pound. Thirty \ ears ago it was sold for half 
that figure, whilst today ordinary Congou realises about 
4d. or 5d. the pound in bond, the dity being 6d. This 
great cheapening of the article was brought about to 
some extent by a reduction of the import duty, but 
in a larger degree by the action and skiful competition 
of growers of Indian and Ceylon teas, These new caterers 
for public favour have, by »n excellence of flavour, taken 
the British tea-table by storm, and whereas 30 years ago 
British-grown leaf formed but a twentieth part of the 
total imports of tea, today it constitutes the larger 
portion of the quantity consumed in this country. 
This result is the outcome of the British quality of 
thoroughness. 
The Britisher does nothing by halves, and thus it 
was that, in order to produce a really pure tea, un- 
oontaminated by contact with unclean Asiatic hands, 
the tea planters of India and Ceylon expended enormous 
sums in the purohase of the most elaborate machinery. 
This costly outlay has been crowned with success ; but 
despite all this, the troubles of the British tea-table 
are not at an end, partly as the result of its success. 
In this age of infinite quackery, the army of retail 
traders are ever on the war-path to work out some 
new device by which rivals may be outwitted and the 
confiding public victimised, and the planter who has 
devoted the best years of his life to battling with 
olimate, finds his favourite product tampered with and 
placed before an unsuspecting publio under the most 
discouraging conditions — a degraded and debased 
article, to enable the vendors to swell their profits. 
These remarks apply to the " packet" system of trades 
under which the larger portion of the retail tea busi- 
ness of this country is now conducted. We are glad 
to know, and we frankly concede the fact, that there 
are a few honourable exceptions to this discreditable 
state of things. The present tea-table trouble of the 
growers of good, well-flavoured leaf is that, in order to 
undersell the fair dealer in pure article, the unfair 
dealer resorts to the unworthy device of making up 
packets of cheap China or Java rubbish, with, perhaps, 
just a sprinkling of the genuine artiole, for "conscience" 
sake, which, adorned with picturesque and strongly 
worded wrappers, are palmed off on the unsus- 
peoting as the produce of some favoured garden 
in the beautiful island famed fer its cinnamon and its 
pearls. Could the unhappy planter whose produce is 
thus tampered with taste the poor, washed-out, insipid 
liquor whioh figures on the tea-table of the unwary pur- 
chaser, he would metaphorically tear his hair and rend 
his olothes. The packets containing this fraudulent 
article are elaborately designed, and, as a rule, the 
poorer the contents the more pretentious the wrapper 
and its label, deoeptive in its false gorgeousness as a 
Dead Sea apple. There are various modes by which a 
false description of the real contents of these paokets 
are placed on their wrappers : usually it is by printing 
on them the name of some imaginary tea plantation 
having no existence in the island whence they are de- 
clared to have been "imported direct." These prac- 
tices, we regret to say, are not resorted to by small, 
ignorant East-end or suburban dealers, but by whole- 
sale houses of long standing, and otherwise of good 
repute. 
We are fain to hope thut this system of "unfair" 
trade is adopted by the firm without the knowledge 
of the) principals, and, under these circumstances, 
the attention of a former Chief Magistrate might be 
called to it. We have before us as we write a choice 
collcotion of the unsavoury offspring of latter-day tea 
trade, varying in the nature of thin, misleading 
devices, but all framed with one common aim and 
object. One of these, the least pretentious in outward 
garb, but most sinning in the audacity of its romance 
was ornamented by a figure of a Chinese junk on one 
side, and on two others by Chinese letters, whilst it 
bore an imprint in large bold letters of the words 
" GUADAMA, CEYLON TEA "-Guadama being the 
name by which the founder of the Buddhist faith 
was known. At the head of the parcel were printed the 
sellers' names, their principal being, we understand the 
mayor of the town in which it was bought — a 
small place in the valley of the Thames. When it 
was brought to the notice of this rural mayor that 
his " Ceylon " packet contained nothing better than 
a poor oheap China tea, he at onoe admitted the 
fact, adding, apologetically, that his shopboy had 
"inadvertently filled the paoket from the wrong bin" 
There is yet one other oase of unfair trading by means 
of counterfeiting names, in the instance of packets 
bearing the title of «' T APROIi UN DA " in bold pro- 
minent letters, beneath which figured the words, 
nearly as large, "Ceylon Tea," and below all the 
lettering was the figure of a native of Ceylon. There 
was no question that this packet was offered for 
sale as veritable Ceylon tea j yet when tested by a 
Minoing-lane expert it was f und to be a low des- 
cription of Assam leaf. The address of the vendors was 
on the packet as the " Importers." When the parties to 
this method of tea dealing were spoken to on the 
subject, they coolly declared that it contained twenty 
per cent of Ceylon tea, and promised that in future the 
word "blended " should be punted on eaoh packet, 
whioh was eventually done, but in snob, a way and in 
such small type as to be distinguished with difficulty. 
Truly, our tea-table has had it bad time, first with 
slanders, then with a crushing duty, and now with all 
the unfair dealing which the ingenuity of greedy 
traders is abl9 to devise. We wish it to be under- 
stood that our objection to the almost universal sys- 
tem of unfair trade in this direction has a still stronger 
warrant than the fact of its adoption under fictitious 
conditions. We go further. We say that tbe poor, 
flavourless imitations of properly-prepared fully-grown 
tea possess none of the essentials which render it of 
value to tea-drinkers, being deficient in iheine, the 
active principle which sustains and restores the waste 
of the human body. — Citizen, Feb. 22nd. 
THE BENGAL BICE TRADE. 
On more than one occasion in the last two years we 
have drawn attention to the injury inflicted on the 
Bengal rice trade by the excessive penalties awarded 
against shippers by London Arbitrators. It would ap- 
pear from a review of the rice business for 1889, 
which is published in a leading home trade journal, 
that the effects of the evil complained of are being 
manifested in an alteration of the conditions under 
which shipments have hitherto been made, if not also 
in a serious deoline in their volume. According to this 
review, " shipments fell considerably short of the pre- 
vious year, amounting to 53,400 tons against 100,000 tons 
in 1988. Contrary to the custom of late years, shippers 
brought forward a considerable portion of this year's 
supplies unsold and realised after arrival, thus avoiding 
the ordeal of arbitrations to which most of the sales 
to arrive were submitted." It may be necessary to 
mention that sales of Bengal rice were, isa rule, ma da 
on small samples drawn by London rice brokers from 
the shipments of the previous season; With these 
small samples the bulk shipped was supposed to agree 
exactly in colour, size of grain, etc., and in default, 
heavy penalties were exacted from the shippers. The 
arbitrators did not take into account the smallnass of 
the samples on which the sales were made, nor the 
repeated " handling " to wbieh they had been subjeoted 
before the arbitrations took place, though in other 
braucbes of the produce business due acoount is taken 
of these considerations. The complaint of the Indian 
shipper is that when he is unable accurately to matoh 
the small sample on whioh he has sold, the award 
given agaiust him does not represent the, difference 
