miiH: 
Vol. X. COLOMBO, FEBRUARY 2 nd, 1891. fXo 8 
LEAD FOE LINING TEA CHESTS. 
considerable amount of dis_ 
cuEsion has of late taken place 
as to how far it may be 
possible to substitute various 
forms of linings for tea chests 
in lieu of the lead which 
has almost from time 
immemorial, been used for that purpose. The 
objections that may be taken to the use of lead 
for this purpose are many and various. Chief 
among these is the item of cost, and, scarcely 
secondary to that, the weight for which land 
carriage both up to the estates and down to the 
port of shipment has to be paid. Thera are those 
who further maintain that lead packing for any 
articles of an alimentary nature is to be deprecated, 
it being urged that, although in a degree 
insensible to observation, the introduction of a 
certain amount of lead poisoning most injurious 
to human system, may be due to the practice. 
We may, we believe, leave this last objection 
out of consideration ; for although we do not 
deny that the contact of lead with food destined 
for human consumption is injurious, we doubt exceed, 
ingly if it has been proved that the tea packed in 
lead linings has ever imbibed from it any deleterious 
quality. The two first objections we have mentioned 
are, however, of gravity fully sufficient to justify 
the desire felt for the provision of some 
efficient substitute for these lead linings, for they 
are — all experience teaches us — not only weighty^ 
but sometimes costly and troublesome to prepare. On 
this account alone we have welcomed, and are 
yet prepared to welcome, any suggestion likely to 
be of effect in offering an efficient substitute for 
lead. Of late, reports reaching us as to the satisfac- 
tory results of shipments made in lead paper, as 
also in artificial parchment, would seem to have 
indicated that such a substitute had been found. 
But the mention made in our London Letter by 
last mail of a recent experience must compel us 
as yet to suspend a favourable judgment on this 
point. We are told that an expert tea-taster of 
eminence was able to at once pronounce, not alone 
as to the material used for enveloping the tea 
submitted to his judgment, but even as to the 
character of the enclosing chest. Such a result 
can have but a single meaning, viz,, that the lining 
— in the case under notice, lead paper — was not 
impervious, and that it had permitted to pass 
through it and to be absorbed by the tea some 
inherent taint in the material of which the chest 
was composed. 
Confirmation as to this has been supplied to 
us from other correspondence, which asserted 
that several of these load-coated paper linings, 
when examined after receijpt at home, were 
found to be perforated with innumerabl, smaL 
holes, the fact leading to the oonclueion that the 
film of metal placed upon the paper had been too 
thin to resist the action of the acids exuding from 
the material of the chests, though, the perfora- 
tion being so minute, they might have been caused 
by the action of damp alone. But it matters little 
how minute these perforations were. They may 
not have been as “ deep as a well nor as wide 
as a church door”— to quote Shakespeare, — but what 
they lacked in size they made up for by their 
number, and it must be evident that any lining 
liable to become so affected must be untrust- 
worthy, and that its uee is therefore out of the 
question when so much of financial return to our 
planters is dependent on their produce reaching 
its several markets in a perfectly sound state. 
We learn from home that the fact of failure is 
fully recognized by those who have hitherto made 
trial of this proposed substitute for lead, and that 
they will abandon the further use of it. 
We may conclude, therefore, that as yet what 
we require has not been found, and that we shall 
do wisely for the present to stick to our old and 
well-tried lead linings, however weighty the objections 
to their use may be. But our London Correspon- 
dent has sent to us by the mail a specimen of a 
newly-manufactured material on the possible suc- 
cess of which Bomo hopes may be built. It 
would seem that, while sheet lead such as we use 
at present is unnecessarily thick and heavy, the 
loaded paper errs in the other extreme, that of 
the film of the metal being too thin. Possibly, 
therefore, a remedy is to be found in some 
material which shall provide the juste milieu. 
This the speoimon of lead foil -as it is termed 
— that has been sent to us seems to provide. It 
apparently has body enough to resist the action 
of either a moderate amount of acid or of damp, 
while the paper lining added to it — if, indeed, it 
bo paper — would prevent any contact between the 
tea and the lead. It is said to have he furthej 
