82 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [August i, 1887. 
not realise our estates. I believe we would be able to 
do so, at auy rate, at the prices at which they stxnd in 
our books. When we lent upon them they were valued 
at over £50,000, and we hold them at about £25,000. I 
believe that in a very short time you could easily realise 
your £25,000. (Applause.) Your Secretaries have, 
however, submitted to the Directors a statement show- 
ing what they think might, when the tea is in full 
bearing, be the return from these estates. It will be 
some time yet before your estates are up to their full 
productive power ; but certainly, from what has been 
shown to us, we think that there is a fair prospect of 
our getting so considerable a return as to make it un- 
desirable to wind up the Company. In point ot fact, we 
should rest content with our success, and continue to 
work these two estates, which will now have three 
classes of products, and which, we believe, will con- 
tinue to yield to the shareholders satisfactory and in- 
creasing returns. (Applause.) 
If there are any questions to be asked, I shall be 
; lad to answer them. Meantime, I beg to move the 
adoption of the report. (Applause.) 
Rev. Dr. Gbant said: — I have much pleasure in se- 
conding the motion that has been made by the Chair- 
man. He has stated so well, and so fully, the pre- 
sent position of the Company that it would be alto- 
gether superfluous in me to add any remark. I may 
simply state that I am satisfied that, having regard 
to the nature of the properties we hold, and also 
the loans, there is every reason to believe that this 
Company will enjoy a much larger measure of pro- 
sperity than it has done for many years past. 
The report was unanimously adopted. 
Mr. Robert Davidson : — I have great pleasure in 
proposing the re-election of Mr. J. Brooks Wright and 
Mr. J. B. MacBrayne as Directors of the Company. 
I think we cannot do better than leave it in their 
hands. They know the Company from the very com- 
mencement, have taken a great interest in it, and 
have brought it to the present satisfactory state that 
it is in. 
Mr. Wm, Bottomley, Junr. — I have much pleasure 
in seconding the re-election of the Directors that now 
retire. We all feel that we are indebted to them for 
their great attention to the Company. 
The motion was unanimously agreed to. 
Mr. James M'Kinnon. — I rise to move tho re- 
appointment of Mr. Alex. Moore, C.A., as Auditor, 
and that his remuneration be ten guineas. 
Mr. George Duthie. — I beg to second Mr. Moore's 
appointment. 
The motion was unanimously agreed to. 
A vote of thanks to the Chairman terminated the 
proceedings. 
♦ 
A COFFEE EING. 
(Daily Telegraph, June 16th.) 
It might be imagined, from the existence of a 
co ffee-room in every hotel, inn, or tavern of any 
P r etensions in the British Isles, that the use of 
co ffee is much more extended among us than is 
re ally the case. In France the consumption of coffee 
ls ten times, and in the United States five times, 
greater than that of tea, while in the United 
Kingdom the annual consumption of tea is very 
nearly five pounds per head of the entire population, 
while that of coffee is less than one pound per 
head. Three explanations have been suggested by 
experts for this seeming anomaly. The first is a 
belief that coffee is heating, and more suited to a 
dry than to a moist climate ; the second, the heavy 
taxation to which coffee was subjected by Mr. 
Pitt, and remained in force, with slight modific- 
ations, until, in 1872, Mr. Lowe, then Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, reduced the duty to fourteen 
shillings per hundredweight and to twopenceper pound 
for the kiln-dried, roasted or ground article ; and the 
third, the unconquerable indisposition of the con- 
suming population to put themselves to the amallest 
extra trouble and inconvenience in preparing coffee 
for their immediate use, instead of resorting to 
the cheaper and more popular beverage, tea. Few 
are aware that the use of tea and coffee in Western 
Europe is, comparatively speaking, a modern in- 
novation. In that instructive and interesting 
work, "The Dawn of British Trade to the East 
Indies, as Recorded in the Court Minutes of the 
East India Company between 1599 and 1003" — for 
which we are indebted to the industry and research 
of that indefatigable antiquary, the late Mr. Henry 
Stevens, of Vermont, who supplied American 
books to the British Museum for many years — 
no mention of either tea or coffee occurs. We 
learn, indeed, from Mr. Stevens that in 1603 pepper 
was so valuable a commodity as to necessitate 
" the providinge of six sewtes of canves dublett 
and hose without pocketts for six porters to 
weare while imploied in the fillinge of bagges 
with pepper brought home by the goode shippe 
Assention from the East Indies." It is obvious 
from this entry that when a pound of pepper was 
worth about twenty-five shillings the porters en- 
gaged in unloading it could not be trusted with 
pockets in their canvas suits. Not a pound of tea 
or coffee seems, however to have been imported to 
this country from the East down to 1603, in which 
year Queen Elizabeth died ; and we know from 
Mr.Froude's " History of England" that the Virgin 
Queen and her maids of honour breakfasted upon 
shins of beef and tankards of small beer, and washed 
their hands — of which, by the way, the vain 
Queen was excessively proud — with " Castle," or 
Castil, " soape," worth about ten shillings a bar. 
The first mention of tea — or, as it was then called, 
tay — as an article of British commerce occurs in a 
letter written by a Mr, Wickham, on the 27th 
of June, 1615, which appears in the records of 
the East India Company. Shortly after that 
date, small parcels of tea, valued at ten pounds; 
sterling per pound, were imported from China to the 
East Indies, whence they made their way to London 
as presents to some of its wealthy citizens. The 
first large consignment of tea was received in 1657 
by Mr. Thomas Garway, a London merchant, and 
with it he opened " a stand," known in our times 
as " Garraway's Coffee House," for the sale, not 
of coffee, but of tea. 
The first coffee-house really deserving to bear that 
name which was opened in the Metropolis for the 
sale of the decoction from the Arabian berry was 
established in 1652 by Pasqua. in Newman's-court, 
Cornhill. Pasqua, a Greek, was servant to Mr, 
Edwards, a Turkey merchant, and the taste for 
the new beverage increased so rapidly that coffee- 
houses became common in London at the date of 
the Restoration of Charles II. It is recorded in 
" Evelyn's Diary," on May 10th, 1637, that " there 
came in that year to the college of Balliol, in Ox- 
ford, one Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece, 
who was the first that ever I saw drink 
coffee, which custom came not into England 
until about thirty years later." D'Israeli mentions, 
in his " Curiosities of Literature," that a great 
prejudice against the use of coffee existed among 
the women of France and England, on the 
ground that it was supposed to be the cause of 
sterility among them. When, therefore, the London 
coffee-houses were burnt down in the Great Fire 
of 1665, a " Women's Petition against Coffee" was 
extensively signed, praying that the shops and taverns 
where the pernicious beverage was prepared and 
sold might not be rebuilt. A more reasonable anti- 
pathy to coffee-houses sprang up in 1675, when they 
were temporarily closed by Danby, one of Charles 
II. 's Ministers, because of their Puritan origin. 
They were reopened, however, next year, at the 
earnest solicitation of the traders, and for a while 
