August i, 1893.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 109 
la three and a half months' wotk the Com 
pany have raised 25 tons of pearl-shell, of the 
average value of £120 per ton, soma realifing as 
muoh as £126. The quality of the pearl-shell is 
muub the same aa that from Weetein Australia 
and Torres Straits, which may be put at from 
£90 to £160 per ton. £80 a ton is advanced on 
the shell by two firms in Singapore on delivery 
here, so that it can te seen that the Company 
are turning out a product of good market value. 
In addition about $3,000 worth of pearls have been 
obtained, and besides these two of good quality, 
valued by a professional dealer respectively at 
E800 and E6,000, the latter, an exceptionally fine 
pearl, having been got just the other day. It will 
be sent down to Sirgapore, and will probably be 
exhibited on arrival. If disposed cf in Hatton 
Garden it might fetch' even £150 more than its 
local valuation.— Free Press. 
THE CONSUMPTION OF TEA AND 
OTHER STAPLE DRINKS. 
The following is the conclusion of the article con- 
tributed to the Economic Journal, under the above 
heading, by Mr. C. H. Denyer: — 
Sir Andrew's attack on Indian tea crea'ed quite a 
stir iu the " West End," and a friend tells me there 
were for a time so many applications for pure China 
tea that he had to keep a special canister at hand 
for it. In a few weeks, however, came the reaction; 
the Chinese product had not flavour enough, and all 
his customers returned to their old love. 
Professional tea-tasting is now partly carried on 
by smell instead of taste, yet a tea-'asttr tells me 
that he and his craft sufier acutely from weakness 
and nervous affections, and are for the most 
part strongly tempted to keep out the winter's 
cold by liberal alcoholic potations. Would it not 
seem, then, that there is some possibility of danger 
if English t-eople take too much t a, and take it 
too strong 1 let it is iu these directions that the 
tide seems to be running : we may, tberefore, well 
question the wisdom of any further reduction iu the 
tea duty. It was not long since asserted in the 
House of Commons that the fact that the consump- 
tion increased 65 per cent, when the duty was 
reduced to 4d. tended to show that there were-still 
many persons kept from tea by its high price. It 
is urged, too, that every increase of tea drinking 
means a decrease of alcoholic intoxication. These 
fataements require further proof. My own ex- 
perience tends to show that tea, and sometimes 
strong tea, has largely been substituted for the 
gruel or milk and water which an old labourer 
assures me used thirty years ago to form the staple 
drink of workmen's children. Of course, the added 
sugar and milk make this tea, to some ex- 
tent, nourishing, bui, nevertheless, the medical 
profession is strongly and rightly opposed to 
the growing practice of rearing infants on a 
drink so utterly unsuitable as tea. 
THE INCREASED POPULAElTy OF TEA. 
One hundred and twenty years ago Arthur Young 
complained bitterly of " the custom coming in of 
men mal<ing tea an article of their food almost as 
much as women ; labourers losing their time to go 
and come to the tea table ; nay, farmers' servants 
demanding tea for their breakfast with the maids ! 
whicti has actually been the case in East Kent." 
(" The Farmers' 'Tour," vol. iv , pp. 350 — 2 ) One 
may contrast with the above the story my father tells 
of the consternation caused nearly lifty years ago in 
the then little village of Leytou, Essex, by the advent 
ot a new groom from Suffolk, who actually asked to 
be allowed to drink b' er instead of tea for breakfast, 
this being tlie custom of his homo. The squire's wife 
would not hear of a man wanting beer for breakfast, 
BO completely had the customs of the country 
changed, and that, though you could not then buy 
t^a much under os a Ib.T 
So far as I have been able to ascrrtain, it is the 
usual opinion both of doctors and laymen that tea is 
by no means the thing to aid in the digestion of a 
heavy meal ; yet the so-called " meat teas" have be- 
come iu many parts quite a social institution. Our 
stomachs are hardly like those of the " Cannibal 
Tartars" of whom Dr. Short says: -"Their deli- 
cate dish is raw horseflesh, and when their din- 
ner sits uneasy upon their stomachs, they drink of 
this (coarse green tea), and it rarely fails to 
restore their appetite and digestion." 
William Cobbett, writing in 1821 (Cottage Economy, 
p. 13 c.t seq.), and vehemently urging a reduction in 
the tax on malt, so that the labourer might be en- 
couraged to brew and drink his own beer, draws a 
highly-coloured picture of the ruin brought into the 
homes of the po^r by tea. He says : — "The drink 
which has come to supply the place of beer 
has in general been tea. It is notorious that tea 
has no useful strength in it that besides 
being good for nothing, it has badness in it because, 
it is well known to shake and weaken the nerves." 
He maintains ttiat an average labourer's family 
would save £4 a year by brewing their own 
'peer aud giving up " the troublesome and pernicious 
habit of drinking tea, " and he goes even further : — 
" I view the tea drinkicg as a destroyer of health, 
an eufeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effemi- 
nsoy and lazines", a defeancher of ycutb,Bnd a maker 
of misery for old ege, If you fed a lean hog on tea 
messes instead of malt, he would starve," and the 
effect is as bad on men as it would be on hogs. Again, 
" la it in the power of any man who has attained 
the age of fifty to look back upon the last thirty years 
of hia life witliout cursing the day in which tea was 
introduced into England ? " Cobbett's argument as to 
expense has long since fallen through, for the relative 
prices of tea and beer have now, largely owing to 
legislative interference, completely changed in favour 
of tea ; and bo curse or no curse, we drink four times as 
much tea per head as in 1821, whiletoday tea is hailed 
by the advocates of temperance as having slready done 
much to save the country from the curse of drunkenness. 
We can perhaps adopt a via media. We may agree 
with the writer of a paper in vol. xv- of the Statis- 
tical Society's Jouroal, that "the consumption of tee 
and coflfee has contributed materially io the sobriity, 
decency, and even morality of the inhabitants of this 
country ; " but we must also remember that, bs is 
maintained by the writer of the article "Tea" in the 
Encychpoidia Britannica, "the large quantity of strong 
tea taken by the poor, though it blunts the edge of 
hunger, works sad havoc with the digestive and ner- 
vous By(tett8," and we can fiirly claim careful col- 
ei leration of the, whole question before further legis- 
lative steps are taken in favour of tea as agaiost beer. 
Having difcuFsed our tea at such length, and it- 
deed, the garrulity connected with this beverage is 
one of Cobbett's eerioas objections to it, I do not 
propose to do more than glance at the other items 
in my list of staple drinks. 
COFFEE. 
Among non-alooholio beverages coffee takes the 
second place ; but comes, in this country, a long way 
after its great rival, the annual consumplion in 1890 
being only | lb per head. 
In the iJohammedan world, and in most Conti- 
nental countries, especially France, coffee is beyoix) 
question more popular than tea ; but Mr. S. Dowell 
(History of Taxation, vol. iv., p. 231) oesigr s the tbr^e 
following causes for its secondary importance here : — 
(1) The inoompetenoe, want of attention, and lazinees 
of our .servants in preparing the drink ; (2) a belief 
that colfee is heating aud more suited to a dry than 
a moist oliaiate ; (3) the heavy taxation to wLich it 
was subjected in former years, to which must bo 
added in late years the cheapness and exoellenc-3 of 
tea and white sugar. 
Too much weight must certainly not be assigiiod 
to the last two points ; for tea was «lways, and i* 
still, mnre heavily tixed than coffee, and it w«a 
not till 1847, when the taxes ou coffee had a'teady 
boeu much lednoed, that tbo cODBUinptioa first bcgau 
