208 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. [August i, 1881. 
appears Victoria can take 5J- millions lb. of tea for 
home consumption for a year, and 4 millions of tea 
for export for a year or 9 J millions lb. in all : these 
figures seem large. J. 0. M. 
Mr. Moody's graphic description of the mode in 
which the taste of a people who are specially tea- 
drinkers has been vitiated will be read with interest 
in Ceylon, and producers of the pure and in every 
way superior article will see the difficulty of induc- 
ing consumers to prefer the pure and good to the 
cheap and nasty. The litter has the one advantage 
of cheapness, but on the little packets given away at 
the Ceylon Court, first by Mr. Moody, and now out 
of the teas placed at my disposal for this purpose, 
care is taken to state that one-half the quantity of 
Ceylon leaf will make a better infusion than can be 
got from common China. The testimony of the vast 
majority is " We never tasted better tea." And more 
than this : Mr. Dunn, who conducts the analyses 
under Mr. Newbery of the Technological Depart- 
ment, had a long conference with me about the results 
obtained from some of our Ceylon teas, especially the 
few specimens of green, in testing for tannin. Although 
this is the substance which makes over-infused or 
boiled tea so unpleasant, yet its presence in good 
quantity is regarded as of much importance. With 
reference to an elaborate paper on Indian teas which 
Mr. Dunn is preparing for the Argus, Mr. Dunn has 
been addressing himself as a chemist to ascertaining 
the proportion of tannin present in the various quali- 
ties, and he told me he found some of the Ceylon 
teas, and especially the green, bo exceptionally rich, 
that he is anxious to obtain all possible information 
as to the character of plants, modes of culture and 
preparation, and so forth. I have of course given 
Mr. Dunn the benefit of all the knowledge I possess, 
and I have promised to send him, on my return to 
Ceylon, specimens of plant and leaf in every stage 
of growth and preparation. Perhaps some planter, 
say Mr. James Taylor, will at once prepare and send 
a box of specimens with memoranda to Mr. Dunn, 
addressed to my care ? Mr. Dunn's paper is likely 
to be published in about a week, and, as Ceylon teas 
as well as Indian will be noticed, I shall, of course, 
send copies to Ceylon with such remarks as may be 
suggested. 
Melbourne, 1st February 1881. 
I have attended to the request of Mr. C. S. Arm- 
strong by distributing his samples of teas amongst 
brokers and dealers, taking it upon me to include 
the editors of the Airjus, Age, Telegraph, and Herald. 
In the paper first-named, a very favourable notice 
appears, while Mr. Robinson, the Commercial Editor 
of the Age, to a favourably verdict adds good 
advice about not burning our teas. When the boxes' 
sent by Mr. Armstrong were opened at the office 
of Messrs. J. Henty & Co. Messrs. Moody, Sibthorp 
and Brown spoke very favourably of all except the 
large-leaved kind. But even of this, Mr. Brown, after 
smelling it, said: "This would give excellent liquor." 
It was explained to me that, apart from appearance, 
tea large in the leaf would be objected to by brokers 
and consumers on the ground of bulk in proportion 
to weight. Consumers, measuring by teaspoonfuls, 
would require to alter their standard for large as 
compared with small tea. The large leaves must be 
subjected to the cutting machine, and Mr. Moody 
said to me yesterday with reference to possible objec- 
tions to the appearance of cut, tea: — "You seem to 
have plenty of pekoe tip3 in Ceylon. A good quantity 
of them mixed with the cut tea would largely dis- 
guise the signs of cutting and would greatly improve 
the tea." It seems clear that if we can send from 
Ceylon a tea so prepared as to be ready to go at 
once into consumption on its own merits, without 
giving the dealers the trouble or affording them the 
proQt of the processes of mixing and blending, it 
will be much to our advautage. I do trust— and I 
have good reason to hope — that this result will be 
gained by means of the information I have elicited 
and sent to Ceylon. Of course the flushes of Assam 
hybrid tea are much larger in size than those of the 
Cliina plant. But, no doubt, a large proportion will, on 
sifting, be small and well curled. If this tea and 
the tips are added to the big-leaved tea after the 
latter is cut, the result will, I should think (prepara- 
tion being good) be a perfect tea, for the Australian 
market, at least. Broken and red leaves and dust 
ought, of course, to be separately packed. The sample 
packets made up by Mr. Moody and sent to Ceylon, 
and the statements regarding packages (chests), ought 
to guide those interested in tea. 
Fiji : —Coffee, Cotton, Coconuts and Sugar. 
I have stated why I doubt the capability of the 
Fijian group of islands to become a great coffee country. 
They will be more formidable competitors with 
Queensland as producers of sugar and New South 
Wales in the growing of maize. And I suspect that 
groves of coconuts will yet cover most of the scores 
of smaller islands. Yesterday, a Wesleyan missionary 
came to the Ceylon Court to consult me about get- 
ting coconuts from Ceylon for planting purposes. He 
stated that he and a brother-missionary owned an 
island of 2,000 acres area, on which they wished to 
start their sons as coconut planters. A third mis- 
sionory, name Carey, who has a brother in Ceylon, 
had advised them to get nuts therice, as being supe- 
rior. I told him if he would write me a letter I 
should send it to Ceylon, but I stated my belief 
that Ceylon coconuts were not likely to be superior 
to those of the South Sea islands. 1 also give em-' 
phasis to the great cost of freight for coconuts, which, 
to be of use for plants, must come in the husk. 
While agreeing, too, that coconut planting required 
but small capital, and that, once grown, the trees 
required the minimum of culture, I took pains to 
shew him that we in Ceylon who had gone into the 
details of the subject and its statistics were not re- 
sponsible for sanguine statements about trees bearing 
in seven years and giving one to two hundred nuts 
per annum. In a pamplet on Fiji, prepared with 
reference to this Exhibition, I find it stated that 
the average yield of nuts in Ceylon is 90 per tree 
annually. One-third the number is really nearer the 
mark. But on the higher number is founded the cal- 
culation that, in Fiji, it is safe to estimate 80 nuts 
per tree, per annum, or one ton of copra per ac/e, 
selling for £14 and yielding £13 profit ! I advised 
the cutting down of this by one«half. Even then, 200 
acres, at £6 profit per acre, would mean an income 
of £1,200. If the young men can "watch and wait " 
for returns, the island of 200 acres ought to be a 
good inheritance to them. "But come," I said, 
"let us have a look at the coconuts in the Fijian 
Court. " We went and found the normal eoconuts 
just the fellows of our Ceylon ones. But our atten- 
tion was also drawn to an elongated coconut with a 
depression in the middle which neither Mr. Dawson 
nor I had seen in Ceylon. The man in charge shewed 
us specimens of peculiarly long fibre, suitable for brush- 
making purposes, obtained from these coconuts, and 
he assured us, that, as a rule, nut was obtained from 
each end of the fruit ! • If further enquiry shews this 
to be true, I must see about getting seed nuts from 
Fiji, instead of sending them thither. 
Kapok or Thee Cotton. 
Mr. Moody, with reference to a market for coir 
in Melbourne, having repeatedly told me that it had 
