768 THE TROPICAL A.GRICULTURIST. [VIay ], 1902. 
GRINDING THK DRIKD BANANA 
fruit, which forms, according to Mr, Willcocks, 
a most nutritious diet. The Wady Ryan is to be 
used as a basin for tlie escape of an excessive flood 
and is to become a fasliioiiable inland sea resort. 
The Nile-bed itself is to be looked after, and by 
the help of spurs, etc , the river will be navif,'able 
from Cairo to Assouan and in Mr. Willcicks's mind, 
will be covered with the pleasure boats of tourists 
who will flock to Egypt then as they do to 
Switzerland now. 
— Kgypiian Qazeite, March 17. 
^ 
PRODUCE AND PLANTING. 
The handling and distributing of tea after it is 
produced, by those who know their busineis, is, 
as we have frequently pointed out, more prolii- 
able than growing it. The distributing firms play 
an important part in popularising tea both at home 
and abroad; and some of theui have rendered good 
service to Indii and Ceylon in this respect. The 
wholesale tea trade has become a vastly important 
business of recent years, and has developed on 
broader lines since the rise of the Indian and 
Ceylon tea industries. Some of the old advertis- 
ing firms of the days of China tea have either 
dropped out or restricted their operations, while 
other enterprising people of more recent times 
have launched out with vigour, and have reason 
to feel well satisfied with the result. A history of 
the tea trade to date, with the story of the ri^e 
of the large distributing concerns, whose expansion 
seems to know no limits, would be interesting 
reading. The Mazawattee Company, with their 
huge tea and cocoa business, afford a remarkable 
example of the fruits ot judicious enterprise, and 
there are other firms the history of whose rise and 
progress borders on the romantic side of things 
commercial. The successes of the planter on the 
other hand, at any rate of recent ye-^is, do not 
seem to offer any striking examples of the reward 
which should attend merit. He suffers both from 
pin pricks .and more poignant wounds, and finds 
it difficult to develop at all, because if he should 
do so he will be accused of over-production. He 
hopes for better days, but doubts if he will ever 
loom very large in the chronicles of those who 
write the history of millionaires and how they 
made their money, exoei)t afe secondhand — 
Home and Colonial Mail, March 28. 

GREEN TEAS AND— GREEN TEAS. 
We are disappointed with Mr. Druinmond 
Deane. It is very natural, and only to be 
expected, that be should stand up for his 
own niako of "green teas" and the more 
he tells us about his plans, his new invention 
and the appreciation felt for his samples 
or samples made according to his system 
the better pleased we are. But why in the 
world he should drag in the "American 
Commissioner " into a discussion over 
different makes of green tea, puzzles us in 
the oxtren;('. We can see no more con 
necl-ion than bi^tvveen the proverbi<il "Good- 
win Sands ;i,nd ■{"(MiLei'icu steeple." Indeed 
this diversion looks like a "red heri'ing 
drawn n cross the ycent." As if, conscious 
of a.weak, case notwithstanding all he had 
written, Mr. Deane in conclusion, wished 
the planters of Ceylon to understand:—"! 
and the old school of green tea makers 
are working according to your official Am 
erican advices, while the Observe!^ is hack- 
iiig-up a new-fangled system which is cal- 
culated to discredit yoiir representative in 
America, —therefore, on the personal question 
if on no other, I claim your support"! Now 
any such argument is a simple absurdity. 
In the first place— though we do not usually 
reveal secrets of the sanctum— the senior 
editor (who was the subject of such virulent 
attacks from the American Commissioner 
as showed the latter to be unfit tor his 
semi-official position) has not hitherto written 
on the subject of "green teas" at all. (He 
has had a very busy three months chiefly 
with book work, for home as well ;is local 
publication.) This may possibly at once dis- 
sipate Mr. Druminond Deane's suspicions. But 
a little reflection should show any impartial 
reader how utterly farfetched .and un- 
gro\mded such suspicions are. Our coadjutor 
had his information at first hand from Mr, 
Gait ; but he also had it corroborated by 
the recognised agents of the Planters' Asso- 
ciation (the employers and patrons of the 
Commissioner) and if ever therefore an 
editor was justified in thinking he was 
writing for the benefit of the tea-planting 
industry as a whole, and in accordance 
with the views of the Commissioner, it must 
have been in the present case, although, 
sufficient allow.-ince was not made for the 
need of continuing the estate manufacture 
at any rate until it was seen how the 
superior " greens meet the requirements 
of the American trade and what prices they 
realize. It is a fact that Mr. Win. Mackenzie 
advised that Ceylon planters should turn their 
.attention to "green teas" almost from the 
first day he want to America, though his 
information was far from being as full on this 
point as it might have been. Now green teas 
to suit the people of the United States, 
we are bound to believe— until the contrary 
is proved to us — must be teas much more 
after Mr. Gait's, than Mr. Drummond 
Deane's, system if we are to accept the 
local report of experts who have seen and 
tasted both. 
Let us, however, come to closer quarters 
with Mr. Drummond Deane. By what right, 
or on what authority, does he assume that 
the teas made under Mr. Gait's direction — and 
on the system which will be continued by 
his trained Chinamen at Ambewatte Mills — 
are or need to be artificially colored ? He might 
just as well assume thac teas made on Bruns- 
wick, or any other estate, are colored. We of 
the Observer have alwaysdwelt onthesupreme 
importance of Ceylon supplying "pure 
teas " and what said Messrs. Forbes and 
Walker in their Report on Mr. Gait's teas : — 
" ihe croivninc] looint being their purity and 
freedom from scum or colouring matter " and 
the same Broking firm were very careful 
in their comparison' with estate-made greens, 
thus:— "Green teas now being made in the 
various factories of Ceylon are generally 
speaking sound and good, ^particularly in cup ; 
