214 
THE TROPICAL AQRIOULTURIST. [September i, 1891s 
novel and useful information before the caoao 
planters of Ceylon, 
Some months back my letters told you of a 
negotiation which had been going on between Mr. 
John Hughes, the well-known agricultural chemist, 
and youc Planters' ASEOciation, as to his under- 
takmg certain analyi-es of tea with the view of 
determining fully the characteristics of such kinds 
us might appear to be most in demand in the 
home markets. Somehow or other no determi- 
nation seems to have followed on this negotiation, 
and nothing further had been heard as to it 
until the matter was brought— as I believe, by 
Mr. Borron, to the notice of the tea committee of 
the London-Ceylon Assooiation. Influenced by the 
representations made to it, that committee passed 
a resolution stating its opinion that such an 
analysis as had been suggested by Mr Hughes 
should be carried out, though I believe the 
recommendation was accompanied by a rather 
narrow limitation of the amount to be ex- 
pended upon it of £16. Hearing of this action 
of the committee, I sought an interview with 
Mr. Hughes during the present week to learn 
if he could communicate to me anything further 
beyond what 1 was enabled to write you when the 
(lusstioa was first mooted. Certainly one thing 
that Mr. Hughes remarked to me on this subject 
was a novelty to me, as we suspect it will be to 
a good many of your readers in the colony. Mr. 
Hughes told me that he had come to the conclu- 
sion, from his experience with the tea-tasting 
fraternity in London and elsewhere, that it was 
the presence of a greater or lesser degree of tannin 
in tue tea that determined the valuation put upon 
it. These experts looked in a very large degree to 
strength as governing the prices which can now be 
obtained for teas, and they state that it is the 
proportion of tannin which determines this strength 
and therefore the market value. No doubt this 
view applies more fully only to those teas which 
we drink by the classes to whom economy is a 
necessity, but there is no doubt that these form 
the bulk of tea consumers and that it is their 
taste or requirements which have mainly to be oon- 
Biaered. Anyway, it Mr, Hughes has rightly con- 
cluded, it appears to be a fact that the more tannin 
there is in your teas the better prices they fetch, 
and of course, as this must govern the action of 
your planters, they will doubtless try and produce 
teas iu which a high proportion of tannin is to be 
found. Now according to all my experience, it has 
always been recoommended to us lea drinkers at 
home to purchase suoh teas as are poosessed of 
the least amount of tannin, and delicate flavored 
teas at high prices have been sought for. If what 
Mr. Hughes tells me prove to be correct, we 
are therefore on the eve of a revolution as to the 
highest ix'jalifioations of tea, so far as the price 
it may tetch is concerned. 
During my conversation with Mr. Hughes the 
topic of the rag manure sent out by him for the 
Mariawatte estate come up once again. He told 
me with reference to this ttiat he had heard nothing 
further as to the results obtained with this new 
fertilizer on the estate mentioned ; but he remarked 
that he folt the most entire conhdenae that sooner 
or .later its benetioial effect must become evident 
'.' Indeed," he said, " having seen the elieut of its. 
application myself to the olive bushes bath in 
i'ranoe and lialy, I do not for an instant doubt 
that eiiuilur good results must follow its application 
to the tea busli. There is only one point on which 
there is any doubt in my mind, and that 
is that no opportunity was given me for 
toating a sample alter the consignment had 
beeo put on botird Bbip. It wat^ most 
desirable that this should have been done, 
because, of course, it is impossible for me to 
say whether the manure sent out really con- 
tained all the constituents on which 1 relied 
when recommending it. It is only within 
the last few days that I saw a shipment of 
manures just starting for Ceylon, and it ii 
evident, therefore, that the planters there are com- 
mencing to use fertilizers prepared at home. 
You cannot too stron(?iy urge on your friends in 
the colony the desiraljility of learning, before 
their orders leave England, that they have been 
executed in exact accordance with their 
instructions or the advice of any expert they 
may have consulted. If this be attended to, 
manures sent out from home ought to be 
just as reliable as to their results as is the 
application here of farmyard manure. We 
knoiv that the last muH produce certain 
results. We do not think twice about it, 
and indeed, if failure as to this does occur, 
we may be quits certain that it has either 
been badly applied or that there has not 
been the rainfall sufficient to soak the 
ground with its constituents. For a similar 
reason, therefore, I say that the manure sent 
out for Mariawatte must if it was manu- 
factured in accordance with the speoificatiou 
of its constituents yield sooner or later all that 
had been anticipated of it by me."— London Cor, 
NOTES ON PRODUCE AND FINANCE, 
The "Lancet" on Tea Dbinking.— The Lancet 
although never weary in suggesting new souroes of 
danger to the community, finds it necessary occasion- 
ally, to fall back on au old one : It varies the mono- 
tony of the situation by dividing its favours between 
alcohol and tea. In commenting upon the examina- 
tion at the Waltham Abbey Petty Sessions of a womau 
who is charged with the wilful murder of het two 
children, it says "that a statement of some impor- 
tance was made by the divisional surgeon of police, 
Dr. G. Falcher, with reference to the habits of the 
prisoner. On being interrogated with regard to 
tea-driuking, she said she had been in the habit of 
taking a large quaatity, that she had given it up, 
but had recently resumed the habit in consequence 
of her troubles. Dr. Fuloher was of opinion tbat the 
prisouer was the subject of melancholia, and he ex- 
pressed the belief that the taking of tea in excess 
teniied to undermine the constitution. The powerful 
effect of alcohol in excess as a nerve poison is a matter 
of daily experience. That many of the ailments from 
which women suffer are at least aggravated if not excit- 
ed by excessive indulgence in tea— not as an infusion, 
as it ought to be, but as a decoction — is equally well- 
known ; and although we are not prepared to admit 
that this habit would actually induce a con- 
dition of melancholia, there is little doubt that 
in a woman of neurotic temperament, especially 
if her food were deficient in quantity and 
of poor quality, the use of this beverage in excess 
would be one of the factors in producing and per- 
petuiting a condition of mental instability. It would 
be well if those to whom the frequent cop of tea 
from the pot— which has a permament place at so many 
firesides, and has become almost a necessity, as they 
think— recognised fully the pernicious effects of this 
over-inJalgeuoe, effects which are only surpassed in 
importance by those of the occasional 'drop of gin,' 
of which so much is heard in the out-patient depart- 
ments of our hospitals." The evil^ of stewed tea taken 
in lirge quantities have been pointed out again and 
again in the Lancet and other medical papers. It is 
not the tea that is at fault, it U the ignorance of the 
people who prepare it. If people will persist in making 
soup of lea instead of infusing the leaves, the blame 
is not attributnble either to tba tea or to those v/ho 
grow it. • 
