T I-I E 
Vol- XI. 
COLOMBO, OCTOBER ist, 1891. 
[No. 4. 
MR. DAVIDSON OF BELFAST OiS" 
CEYLON TEA, 
HE great siroojo manufacturer 
and advocate oflow temper- 
ature combined with powerful 
downdraught of air in th® 
manufacture of tea has 
returned to Colombo and is 
about to leave the island^ 
after a visit to our principal tea districts, during 
hich he saw the leaders of the tea enterprisg and 
xplained to them the principles of his low 
temperature method. This method, it must ever be 
remembered, requires the existence in connection 
with a factory, of ample power to produce a 
strong down-draught of air. Without this down- 
draught where low temperature has been adopted, 
the result of which soma have complained. 
of the tea being 
stewed 
itable. 
Some have talked of having adopted low temper- 
ature, instancing 180°, Mr. Davidson refuses to 
regard a heat of 180° as low temperature. His 
figures are 150° for the furnaco heat and 130 
for the evaporating tea, the leaf, as we indicated 
in our previous article, being finished off in a 
separate drier. In an early number of the Indian 
Planters^ Gazette, Mr. Davidson's views, as reported 
by an interviewer and corrected by Mr, Davidson 
himself, will appear in a detailed and authenticated 
form, and we shall not fail to submit the report 
to our readers. 
Meantime we may mention that Mr, Davidson 
has somewhat startled us by stating that one 
result of his visit to the Ceylon tea districts is, 
the conviction in his mind that all our teas 
may be classed for quality as " high-grown." He 
adduced the case of the Kalutara district, where 
the tea is generally planted amongst rocks up 
the sides of more or less steep hills. To our 
oatural remark that tbo heat rc:neoted from the 
faces of the rocks ought, by increasing the tem- 
perature, to give the teas thus grown a more than 
usually low (which means hot) country character, 
his answer was that the cooling down of the 
rocks during the night and of the temperature 
generally was, probably, in proportion to the ex- 
cessive heat during the hours when the sun gave 
out his heat as well as his light rays. In any 
case, as an experienced tea expert, his judgment 
is, as we have stated, that, on the whole, the 
Ceylon teas, from sea-level to 7,000 feet altitude, 
with degrees of difference of course, have all of 
them the properties attributed to high-grown teas. 
TANNIN IN TEA, 
If our London correspondent has rightly under- 
stood what was remarked to him upon the above 
subject by Mr. John Hughes, the well-known 
agricultural chemist, the ideas which many persona 
have entertained on the subject of an excess of 
tannin in teas must be somewhat modified. Of 
course we do not mean to say in this respect that 
a very large amount of tannin in tea contributes 
to its wholesomeness, but that it seems now to 
be contended that the higher the percentage of it 
that certain teas contain, the higher will be the 
price that they will bring in the London market. 
Mr, Hughes is reported to have said to our London 
correspondent that he felt satisfied from what he 
had observed of the practice of London tea-tasters 
that the judgment of these latter gentlemen was 
almost invariably founded upon the relative pre- 
sence or absence of tannin in the teas submitted to 
tliem. It seems according to them that tannin 
is the source of strength in tea, and that motives 
of economy lead the home public to purchase teas 
warranted to possess that strength in preference 
to those which are described as weak, solely because, 
according to Mr, Hughes' judgment, they are 
deficient in tannin. 
Many persons will regard this view, which con- 
firms that o£ the Madras Government quinologist 
Mr. Hooper, founded on analyses of Indian and Ceylon 
teas, compared with selling prices, as a novel 
one, and one which if it can be sup. 
ported must materially modify the principles 
hitherto ruling in the selection of tea. With re- 
gard to this probability we shall look forward 
with some anxiety to the decision of the Com- 
mittee of our Planters' Association with respeot 
to the offer made by Mr, Hughes to prepare a 
set of analyses of different teas. That offer has 
for a long time been held in abeyance by 
our local body ; it has been actually supposed that 
tbo diginolinatioa to aoeept it and aot upon it 
