THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, [November r, 1887. 
mixture with the Indian. The gardens of India and 
Oeylon now send to Great Britain, as we see, 351b out 
of every 1001b. employed among us, having increased 
their supply more than twofold in ten years. And 
when we consider what 180 million pounds signify 
in the breadth of land occupied by the tea-plants, the 
number of hands employed in picking, drying, rolling, 
sorting, packing, and exporting the immense harvest; 
that " forty shillings' worth of the best tay," hazarded 
as a speculative consignment by the old Company, 
wears an aspect more wonderful than the scriptural 
"grain of mustard-seed." Philologists, too, might find 
much to discourse upon in the way in which the "cup 
that cheers" has had its name changed. In China, 
its original home, it is "tcha"; in India, its adopted 
home, it is also "chay," and such was its original pro- 
nunciation with Englishmen, as is plain from the 
couplet, "Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms 
obey, Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea." 
Perhaps its was the French "the" or the Spanish "t€," 
which altered the original appellation. * 
An Indian tea-garden is at the proper season a very 
beautiful sight, especially when cultivation has been 
clean and careful. They are spreading, and they will 
greatly spread ; but if tea and coffee should never be 
wholly dethroned from their dietetic pride of place, 
it is quite possible that new beverages may be in- 
vented to rival them. Mate, which the Peruvian sucks 
hoc through a silver pipe ; guarana, much richer than 
the Mocha berry or the Chinese leaf in theine ; the 
kola-nut and the coca plant are all possible competi- 
tors. The negro of the Soudan, Mauritius, West Indies 
and Brazil would not give up the kola-nut for the best 
of tea or coffee. Then there are millions of people 
who drink infusions of the leaves of saxifrage, of ledum, 
of pimento, and partridge berry, and hundreds of un- 
suspected plants contain the ingredients which the 
human race seeks for in such beverages. The chief 
of these are the alkaloid which is present by a pro- 
portion of about 3 per cent, in ordinary tea, and the 
aromatic oil which gives to that and to coffee their 
special flavour. The Chinese will not drink new tea 
because it contains too much of the latter ingredient, 
and is sometimes actually intoxicating. The "theine" 
diminishes the waste of the body, enabling it to get 
along with less nourishment, so that it saves food, and 
is instinctively valued for this by the poor. The Tar- 
tars obtain still more sustenance from their brick-tea 
by powdering it and boiling with salt and mutton fat 
whereby the caseine or gluten of the plant becomes 
extracted. Then they can live for weeks oh the tea- 
leaves which the British housewife throws away. On 
the other hand, it is distinctly bad to let tea stand 
too long ; that brings out tannin, and too much tannin 
will turn meat taken at the same time into a sort of 
leather within the stomach. There can be little need 
however to instruct the matron of these islands in the 
art of tea-making. From the silver-gilt equipage of 
the duchess to the brown stone pot in which the washer- 
woman solemnly prepares her eveniDg dish of tea, the 
art. of making it is essentially feminine, and has been 
profoundly studied. One hundred and eighty million 
pounds per annum all passed through teapots — what 
a river to spring from Pepys' first tentative spoonful 
and the modest investment of the old Bast India Com- 
pany ! — Daily Te'egraph, Sept. 5th. 
ADULTERATED TEA AND COFFEE. 
The report of the Commissioner of Customs on the 
examination of teas in bond made by their analyst 
under tbo 30th section of the Sale of Food and Drugs 
Act, 1875, shows that the sale of adulterated tea in 
this country is now carefully watched, and will, no 
doubt, ultimately be suppressed. The Commissioners 
fctato there were 2,546 samples received, which may be 
classified as follows : — 1,452 faced green; 42 unfaced 
green ; 332 capers ; 219 congous ; 77 dust ; 424 sittings. 
-Total 2,546. 
* Not so : U is the Amoy pronunciation of the 
name of the plant, which iu all other parts of the 
empire is called cha. — Ed. 
These samples represent consignments amounting in 
the aggregate to very many thousands of packages. 
The teas from which 2,422 of these samples were 
taken were delivered on the authority of the analyst. 
Though many were of very low quality, yet as their 
inferiority was the result of natural causes and not 
in any way attributable to adulteration or the pre- 
sence of exhausted leaves, they did not come under 
the condemnatory clauses of the Act. The remaining 
124 samples, representing a total of 8,086 packages 
were disposed of by order of the Board, under the 
following circumstances : — 802 were capers. These 
the Board permitted to be entered for home con- 
sumption. Though low in attractive matter, due to 
natural inferiority, they were not artificially exhausted ; 
they contained, however, about seven per cent, of 
mineral matter. Twenty-nine packages of green tea 
dust were also permitted to be delivered into the 
market hy order of the Board. These contained five 
per cent, of mineral matter, but in other respects 
were unobjectionable. The 7,255 packages remaining 
came under the prohibitory provisions of the Act, 
and were consequently either seized or restricted to 
exportation. 5,113 of these were capers. They 
were adulterated with exhausted leaves to the 
extent varying from ten to twenty per cent., besides 
being loaded with from seven to eleven per cent of 
sand. 1,693 were Congous, 1,575 of which were China 
teas from Marseilles, * the remainder from China. 
These teas were all adulterated with exhausted leaves 
varying from twenty to thirty per cent. 420 were 
tea dust from China, containing ten per cent mineral 
matter ; 21 tea dust from Japan, with eighteen per 
cent of mineral matter ; four packages green tea from 
Singapore, with six per cent mineral matter, and 
mied with leaves other than tea. 
There were also 4 packages which were unfit for 
human food, and which were seized and destroyed 
accordingly. 
The following table is an abstract of the samples 
analyses in this department during the last five years: — 
1882. 1883. 1884. 1885. 1886. 
Samples analysed .. ..941 852 870 1,430 2,546 
Do. delivered by ana- 
lyst 925 838 850 1,311 2,422 
Do. reported to Board 16 14 20 119 124 
Do. delivered by Board 
for home con- 
sumption .... — — 1 17 10 
Do. delivered by Board 
for export .... 2 14 19 98 110 
Representing packages .. 88 665 978 9,069 7,251 
Seized by the Board. . ..14 — — 4 4 
Representing packages ..164 — — 4 4 
Thus it would appear that the practice of im- 
porting adulterated teas into this country with the 
view of their passing into consumption is by no 
means extinct, and that it would probably increase 
but for the existence of this office. 
Coffee. — The unavowed mixture of chicory with 
coffee is still general. As chicory is worth on'y 
about 2d, a pound, and as so-called " French coffee " 
has been found to contain more than 70 per cent, 
of chicory, the profit of the sale of the mixture at 
Is per lb. is considerable. Of seven samples of 
" coffee " reported by the analyst for Buckingham- 
shire as adulterated, one consisted entirely of chicory 
and the others contained respectively 36, 40, 65, 75. 
80, and 90 per cent, of that inexpensive root. It 
ought to be known, however, that in the case of 
Liddiard v. Recce (44 J. P. 233) where, on coffee being 
asked for, a mixture containing only 60 per cent, of 
coffee was supplied, the nigh Court upheld the con- 
viction of the seller (notwithstanding the fact that 
the parcel was labelled as " a mixture of chicory 
and coffee") on the ground that the justices had 
found that the chicory had been used fraudulently 
to increase the bulk and therefore the seller was 
not protected by section 8 of the Sale of Food and 
Drugs Act, 1875.— H. # C. Mail, Sept. 23rd. 
* N.B.-Ed. 
