584 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [March 1, 1902. 
no doubt have for its object the regulation of quality 
and consquently to a great extent of prices on the 
London Market by carefully restricting supplies and 
shipping only a class of tea calculated to increase the 
demand. It would prove a great misfortune if com- 
petition for cheap teas from British gardens, the 
quality as it has done with cheap China teas, some 
of which are not fit for human consumption. There 
is little doubt that magnificent China teas vrere sold 
to the general public half a century back, but then 
the price paid was enormous and the profit on the 
Bale equally so. Now English people have been 
taught to believe that'the beat tea the world grows is 
riot worth more than Is. 7d. per pound at their grocers. 
This is not true, it is also most unfair on the producer 
who fiuds more and more difiiculty in getting rid of 
his really fine Orange Pekoes at a fair price, the 
ublic taste for tea is not what it was a generation 
ack, the evil has however to a certain extent cut fe ath 
ways and it is quite true that one can now a days buy 
a sound drinkable tea at a much lower price than the 
last generation would have thought possible. 
Before concluding I should like to make a few re- 
marks upon the different names given to tea. In 
the days when China was the only country that grew 
tea it was known by such names as Pekoes, Souchongs, 
Congous and many others which have now almost 
lost their meaning to the general public such as : 
Gunpowder, Bohea, Hyson and Twankay, even the 
more modern names of Kaisow, Lxpsang and Mo- 
ning are far less common than they were ten years 
ago. The pioneer planter in India thought it would 
joe more convenient to continue using the names most 
familiar to the public and to carry out this idea he 
divided the flush or green shoot into difierent sec- 
tions, each section was supposed to resemble one of 
the well-known China sorts. The China tea plant 
was discoverd 5,000 years ago, it is known to have 
been used as tea 12 centuries back. 
Manufactured tea was introdueed into England 
during the reign of the merry Monarch.. China seed 
was used largely when the first gardens were planted 
up in India and was employed in Caylon as far back 
as the year \842. The great discovery of the indi- 
genous plant growing wild in the jungles of Assam 
completely changed the order of things. Some people 
contend that it was a botanist who first discovered 
this plant, whilst others say it was a common garden 
coolie. However that may be the two varieties hy- 
bridized very quickly and produced a useful flush- 
giving tree which was called " Assam Hybrid " and 
which has for a number of years been the chief tea 
of commerce. In some altitudes the indigenous 
yields much better in its natural condition and it 
now appears to be a serious question amongst 
planters whether it was not a mistake in the first 
instance to blend it with the Chinese variety. 
I have now finished my remarks upon tea planting 
and Ceylon generally. It is a marvellous country 
with a marvellous history. In the early days of 
British rule the annual imports amounted to about 
£250,000, stg, they are now about £5,000,000 stg. In 
the early days there were no Uanka no good roads 
or bridges. Very few schools, no hospitals, only four 
post offices and no newspapers. There are now 14 
important exchange and deposit Banks, and Banking 
Agencies doing an annual sum of business amounting 
to about R6a,000;,000. 1,500 miles of splen- 
did metalled roads, countless good bridges, more than 
2,0 00 schoolp. Upwards of 100 hospitals and dispen- 
saries, 2.50 Post Offices, 36 Newspapers and Perio- 
dicals, and nearly 5,000,000 acres of land under culti- 
vation. The shipping entered and cleared in the 
course of the year amounts to nearly 6,000,000 of 
tons as against 75,000, in the early part of the century, 
The Island is also becoming a net-work of mountain 
and seaside railways and both commercially and 
socially was never better off than it is at the present 
moment. 
ALFRED AMES. 
l/auaanm, August 1902, 
A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE 
ENZYME IN TEA. 
During the past few months we have heard a gceat 
deal as to the occurrence and practical value of the 
enzyme in Tea. In view of the work which is now 
being done on this subject in India, Japan and Ceylon, 
it was thought advisable to lay before the planting 
community a brief statement as to the nature of the 
enzyme and the methods of mmufaoture, which may 
be suggested in order to allow full activity of the 
enzyme, if this be desired. 
In India, Mr. Minn and Mr. Newton have contri- 
buted much to our present knowledge of the subject. Mr 
Newton has suggested the application of an external 
enzyme to improve the flavour of tea, but in the 
absence of definite knowledge as to the relations 
between enzyme and flavour, his suggestion may per- 
haps be regarded as a little premature, 
Mr. Mann has mide many useful experiments on the 
substance in question, and bases his deductions 
entirely on the varying intensities of blue obtained 
with gam guiacum on a watery extract of the enzyme. 
He concludes, that it is doubtful whether it woull ba 
possible to add enzyme to leaf of low quality in order 
to improve the quality, and draws attention to there- 
cognised fact that the enzyme would b3 no gojd if the 
substances on which it hid to act wera not present. 
There are, however, several general statements to 
which we shall take exception, particularly those re- 
ferring to the distribution of the euzymj, the absence 
of any knowledge as to what flavour is due to, and 
the statement that the maximam quality is to be cor- 
related with the maximum amount of oxidase. These 
will be dealt with at length in a paper to be published 
later. 
Azo of Japan has also notice! the presence of the 
enzyme in tea, and explains tha oxidation and 
colouring of black tea as a cDnsequsnce of the oxidi- 
sing action of the enzyme. This has long been held 
tD be the case in Ceylon and eveiy where. In our 
preliminary note it will be as well to explain what is 
really understood by the word " enzyme." For our 
purpose, we may describe a plant enzyme as a sub- 
stance existing in the sap, and which is capable of 
inducing chemical changes necessary for the life of the 
plant. As an instance we may quote the commonest 
of plant enzymes, known as diastase, which his the 
power to convert the reserve starch into a soluble 
sugar, which can be conveyed to the growing parts of 
the plant. In the leaves of tea, up to the present no 
starch has been found, so that the action of the 
tea enzyme in the leaf is of a nature diSerent from 
the above. Nevertheless, its function, that of render- 
ing insoluble bodies into a soluble form, is probably 
similar to other enzymes. 
The presence of an oxidase is usually determined 
by the reagent known as gum guiacum. This is a 
resin, soluble in alcoho', and capable when in con- 
tact with certain oxidising and other reagents, of 
acquiring a brilliant blue colour. It has been used 
for many jears as a test for enzymes and other oxi- 
dising bodies, but it does not afford conclusive evi- 
dence as to the presence of an enzyme. There are 
very mmy other bodies which give the blue reaotioa 
with gam guiacum alone, the most notable being the 
oxidising reagents : — potassium permanganate, nitric 
acid, potassium nitrate, potassium chromate, hydrogen 
peroxide, ozone, iodine and ch'orine. What is most 
surprising, ho^iever, is the fact that the blue colours* 
tion may be obtained by means of an aqueous solution 
of oW ferrous sulphate. Farther, Reynolds Green 
pa;/e 337, states that even albumen, peptone and 
other native proteids as well as gelatine, give the 
same blue reaction. 
It is therefore obvious, that before one can uaa 
the test as a means of detecting an enzyme maoh 
work must be done. In the first place, all the oxi- 
dising substances mentioned above can be neglected, 
since the^ do not occur in free etate in the 
