10 THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [July 1, 1903. 
morning while the pluckers are under ponring rain 
for some time, much more therefore will it be likely 
that the leaf from separate divisions in a large 
tract may vary enormously in respect of residual 
and artificial moisture. Under these conditions the 
Manager of the receiving room will with very little 
practice be able to make his arrangements for the 
distribution of the leaf to the various rooms. Sup- 
posing, for instance, the possible degrees of moisture 
from Dormal to he4.vily water-logged, be divided 
into ten, and he has five empty rooms out of a 
total ten available, there may come information that 
it is raining heavily in half the gardens and is fine 
On the others : he might thereby have three room 
loads of No. 10 and two of No. 1 or 2, but his 
final reports would probably give a much finer division, 
according to the actual rainfall, and he might be 
able to "distribute the leaf so that, if possible, each 
room would not contain more than one grade, the 
final arrangement coming out that he has, say, 
one room full of No. 1 degree, two of No. 5, one 
of No. 8, and one of No. 9. He would therefore 
set his No. 1 degree room— the dry est — to be withered 
first and at the exact calculated time at which the 
last room of yesterday's batch will be rolled oft, 
one room of No. 5 degree to follow, the second No. 
5 at the tail of that, and so on, it being remem- 
bered always that perfect control is maintained 
over the Draft, Temperature and Humidity of air 
used in the Blast, nothing whatev,^r being left to 
chance or the vagaries of the weather. Up to the 
last year or two there has not been a method by 
which air could be dried in large quantities without 
at the same time being innocuous to the delicate 
flavour of the tea leaf. Now, however, that there 
is more than one method which can be worked on 
a commercial scale, and as we may reasonably ex- 
pect the methods to improve as demand arises, we 
shall have at hand a method of drying our air to 
the exact degree required. The velocity of the air 
passing through the drying apparatus into the 
withermg room will be set by the area of the 
apertures in the Blast Tower in connection with 
each room, and will vary in each room from time 
to time according to the moisture in the leaf and 
the time at which the leaf will be required in the 
rolling room. The temperature will, I imagine, be 
at all times a theoretical fixture based on scientific 
experiment, but will be capable of regulation by 
throwing into action one or more stands of refri- 
gerating pipes located in the air ducts leading to 
the lofts from the drying room. 
The Eollikg Room. 
The EoUing Machine of the present day is to 
the outward eye a very long way in advance of 
the hand rolling of twenty or thirty years ago, 
though an observation of a modern circular action 
machine show.s that the box and hood (in the case 
of an open-top. ihe superincumbent leaf) is really 
nothing more than a very cleverly developed imita- 
tion of a huge and powerful hand, acting exactly 
as a hand does in the case of rolling, with th^i 
exception that the table is made to do its share. 
The disadvantage which precludes its advance into 
larger units is the fact that it rolls off a large 
quantity of leaf at one time, which cannot be 
placed in the same bulk into the drier. This I 
take it is not a fault on the part of the Drier but 
of the roller, for the development of the ideal 
machine in almost all classes tends towards a con- 
tinuous action, Which no roller yet produced has 
accomplished, snd as it is desirable to bring one 
out as early as possible neveral planters and en- 
gineers are racking their brains in this direction. 
That the coutinuoiM roller will come, we may be 
B? fely assured : that it will be a large and heavy 
machine is probable, if it is made as it should be 
to take a heavy stream of leaf so as to ensure 
uniformity of roll over an entire day. Such a 
machine would, I imagine, be a lengthy a£fair, aa 
the leaf would have to be constantly moving forward, 
it would also have to inclade internal apparatus to 
prevent or break down the formation of leaf bn Us; 
it must be simple in its action, contain few moving 
parts, and be capable of being readily opened out 
for purposes of cleaning and repair. Having thus 
indicated the required lines of roller development, 
we will return to the tea which being delivered at 
the end of the roller will be conveyed by a con- 
tinuous belt to the fermenting room, and fed on to 
rows and banks of trays which will move forward 
and halt in turn as they are tilled. Here in a cool 
and scientifically fixed temperature, the leaf will 
lie, until in the scheduled time it ia again discharged 
to advance on the Drier. 
The Dbying Room. 
The modern large sized automatic drier is, as 
has already been stated, far in advance of the 
roller in the one important respect that it is con- 
tinuous in its action, but even so there is room for 
improvement in many ways. It may be doubted if 
the most extensively used system of the present 
day of heating a vast volume of air by means of 
fuel fed furnaces and drawing it through the leaf 
will be continued indefinitely ; already there are 
radically different methods being introduced, among 
which may be noticed the steam and electric driers. 
In the former, the fan or blast arrangement ia 
reduced to the duty of merely carrying off the moisture 
evaporated, the heat being applied directly to the 
leaf by means of steam pipes under a low pressure 
over which the leaf trays are made to slide. AVhile 
holding no brief for the inventor, it may be well 
considered whether the fully developed machine 
working from a steam boiled and applying heat to 
the leaf without the intervention of hot air tubes 
and plates is not the superior method, it hat at 
least the one advantage that in the matter of burning 
the tea, it practically eliminates the human factor, 
as given a lock-up reducing valve and a low set 
safety valve, it is practically impossible for the at- 
tendant operator to offend in this lespect. It haa 
the further possible advantage, though it has pro- 
bably not been thought of by the inventor, it ia 
possible to have different temperatures in different 
parts of the machine, either by interposing a second 
reducing valve or by providing a by-pass from the 
high pressure side of the first. There is then the 
electric drier, at present a failure, on account of 
the fact that the materials for the idea were ahead of 
the materials available for carrying it out, as so 
frequently befalls the ambitious inventor. It i* 
possible that in the course of years a radiator will 
be invented capable of standing the continuous strain 
put upon it without burning out, but it will only 
be useful where ample cheap power is available. 
The new drying machine for our wholesale factory 
will not be built in the present two-maund-an- 
hour units, more probably it will occupy a length 
of from fifty to eighty feet and carry— if it has 
endless webs at all — some ten or fifteen rows 
of trays. Perhaps, if some successful method for 
turning over and stirring the leaf were introctuced 
in plaae of tipping trays, a single chain of trays 
would be Bumcient as a unit, in whioh case the 
working would be economical. Of one thing we may 
be certain, the machine will be automatic, and it 
will finish the drying in one operation. It will, in 
any case be heated from a central source, and 
ventilated by dried air, and if the machine ia on the 
principle of heat locally applied, this air will be 
also heated by enclosing the feed duct inside the 
exhaust pipe leading to the central blast tower. It 
ia also fair to suppose that the evaporation from one 
row of trays will not be permitted to pass through 
the leaf albove or below, neither will the temper- 
ature applied to the nearly finished leaf necessarily 
be the same as at the start, Managers still dia- 
