644 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [March i, 1889. 
BANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT TEA. 
HINTS FOB HOUSEWIVES FBOM A BACHELOR ! 
HINTS ALSO TO PKODUCERS AND DEALERS IN TEA. 
(Written in a long-arm chair.) 
The late Dean of Bangor was assuredly not far 
wrong, when, a few years ago. he fearlessly asserted 
there was " Death in the Tea-pot," — the hubbub 
made about this really hind remark no doubt tended 
to shorten the worthy Dean's days. 
If only from a " Tea " point of view, Carlyle's 
sneering assertion that the population of the United 
Kingdom consisted of so many millions " mostly 
fools" seems not altogether to have been undeserved. 
His equally cynical prayer to the " great god of 
shoddy," too, seems also very much to the point. 
That the Chelsea philosopher hud any sufficiently 
good grounds for his sweeping contempt for and 
condemnation of the average brains of his fellow- 
creatures may be open to question, but from a tea 
point of view at all events he was not far wrong. 
Why is it that nothing has ever been done by 
the leading Indian and Ceylon Tea Associations to 
attempt to teach not only the people of the United 
Kingdom but the "people of the world, how best to 
preserve the good qualities of the tea they may buy 
periodically, and seeing how very little the art is 
understood, how best to prepare it for the table? 
How many people still use the quaint old tea caddies 
left to them as heirlooms by their grandmothers. 
The boiling of the leaves (as one would cook a 
cabbage) is still persevered in ! To foster the taste 
for our rich and delicate Ceylon teas in all countries 
some education would seem to be necessary, seeing 
that the methods now in vogue for keeping and 
making tea in the largest tea-consuming country 
in the world are so very much at fault. 
HOW TO BOr AND " PRESERVE " TEA FOR MONTHS. 
The immense strides made in the consumption of 
strong (because pure) teas from India and Ceylon 
during the past decade may shortly react against 
any further development (if not actually to throw it 
back), if some steps are not taken to assist the 
brains of the millions now using these teas in pre- 
ference to the wishy-washy because impure China teas. 
These latter have assuredly but too often been 
subjected to the palateB of the Chinese themselves 
before they were retired and sent to the "foreigners"! 
Not much harm, therefore, could come npon those 
who boiled and stewed such worthless teas, in order to 
extract from them the little strength they retained. 
Today however, everything is changed. India aud Ceylon, 
aided by tea machinery and railways and the Suez Canal, 
are now enabled to put their teas in various market! 
of the world iu a few weeks, where formerly it took 
months. Really good China (virgin) tea can, I know, be 
kept intact like wine for years with considerable 
advantage : the same it is well-known is the 
case with coffee. This is done today by the few who 
can afford to buy tea and store it as they would pott 
wine, but they are very few. Indian and Ceylon teas, 
it is stated, will not keep for an indefinite time: — this 
may be however — and I for one think it is — open to 
question, but it is not necessary that they should be 
kept an indefinite time. It is very necessary, however, 
that these teas should be kept, not in open caddies or 
drawers but in airtight cauidters. I put them in the 
plural, for no wise housewife would dream of putting 
all her summer-prepared plum-jam in one huge pot ■ 
and tea, to be carefully preserved, Bhould be treated in 
a Mtnilar coramonsense fashion, even to the gum- 
ming over of the junction (not wider than a crown- 
pie e) of the almost mathematically correct fitting 
of the round tin tops to the canisters, which 
before ve phould be well seasoned. This can 
be best done l;y subjecting them a few times to hot 
water in which tpent tea leaves have been boiled. 
I l .ive been speaking so far of tea bought in chests 
or balf-choitH reaching the consumer with the lead 
intact. If the lead is not intact, then the teas will 
muni i;robably have absorbed some moisture. Anyway 
tub ri.k of the tea having do.,, so should be at onoe 
guar ded against by the careful housewife who means 
to keep the tea for months . (Here according to present 
practice would come in aptly and appropriately 
Carlyle's spiteful statement ie "fools.") She would 
seize an opportunity, after her half-dozen or dozen 
seasoned canisters were ready and placed near 
the fire, to throw out upon a large cotton sheet 
the whole of the tea, the aroma of which she 
wished to " preserve." Turning the tea over for 
an hour or so before a glowing kitchen-fire, the 
moisture would soon fly up the chimney, and then 
the filling of the warm airtight canisters would begin 
in earnest — say canisters containing about 8 lb. each, 
which when once seasoned and used would last from 
one generation to another ; so the expense could not 
be an objection. (The trouble might be one insuperable 
objection, and here Carlyle's prayer to the " great god 
of shoddy " might come in.) Let English wives bestow 
as much trouble upon the tea they buy as their hus- 
bands do upon the wines the// buy, and we should 
hear less about " bad tea to keep," assuming, of 
course, that really good tea was purchased. As a rule 
the middle classes buy the dearer teas; the lower 
classes would also do the same if they could get them at a 
fair price, hut they cannot. The richer the people are 
the poorer the teas they buy as a rule: this is no empty 
statement. I will now proceed to point out how CON- 
SUMERS OF BRITISH-GROWN TEAS would be 
doiog themselves and others, many of whom may be 
engaged in tea-growing, A good torn by listening to a few 
words more upon tea-moikvng —a department so dis- 
tinctly held to be the " ladies' own " that they would 
keenly resent any attempt that should be made to 
oust them out of it, as in my opinion too many of 
them richly deserve to be. 
THRIFT VERSUS PRUDENCE. 
With regard to "thrift," &c. — " Thrift" generally ac- 
cepted to be one of the great virtues becomes a very 
demon when looked down upon and prudently con- 
sidered in the many millions of teapots, now the pride 
of every English and Australian housewife, and soon 
it i3 to be hoped to become equally the pride of 
every continental one, for, aided by countless British 
matron» it is due to the positively, harmful exercise of this 
virtue at the present time that is unquestionably not 
only arresting the progress of the grandest crusade 
of modern time, ever engaged in waging war with 
alcohol, hut is actually threatening to block the further 
progress of the vast battalions of tea until now un- 
ceasingly moving to the attack in front — an ad- 
vance that has hitherto, in fact, been by "leaps and 
bounds " — and this too at a time when the cost of mar- 
shalling such a tremendous force is not one-half what 
it was twenty years ago, when tea was selling 
at about double its present (now almost un- 
remunerative) price. Pamphlets printed in Eng- 
lish, French, German, and Italian, should by 
the agency of the countless churoh and chapel 
and other temperanoe societies in the countries 
mentioned be sown broadcast and (wherever, 
of course, Indian and Ceylon teas were being 
pushed) giving brief directions for preserving tea until 
it is used, and giving also equally brief and plain in- 
structions for making it — of which more anon — ending 
up by giving extracts from the opinions of the leading 
London and Continental physicians proving that ill-con- 
sidered lengthened infusions, boiling and stewing of the 
leaves, were calculated to work harm eventually to the 
drinkers. Such cautions, carefully worded, should no 
more alarm the people than if they were told that drink- 
ing raw immature spirits would be harmful, while mature 
spirits, well diluted, might if taken in moderation pro- 
bably have a beneficial effect. Many doctors at home are 
now forbidding the drinking of tea to many of their 
fair patients, because by their unfair treatment of the 
fragrant leaf they have brought themselves into such 
a state that they can no longer take it with that benefit 
they would always have enjoyed had they but pre- 
pared it from the first in a commonsense sort of way. 
HOW to infuse and drink tea. 
To make tea :— 1. The water to be boiled should be 
fresh and pure. 
