ORCHID TEA. 485 
hemlock, and white wood. It is brought to the works in the condition 
of ordinary cord wood, and it is cut into chips by two immense machines 
having cutters attached to rotary discs, something like rotary straw- 
cutters. The feeding-troughs are inclined so that the wood is cut 
obliquely to the grain. These machines are each capable of cutting up 
between thirty and forty cords of wood in twenty-four hours. The 
chips are received in waggons, in which they are conveyed to the pulp- 
boiling house, and from which the chips are delivered by mechanical 
elevators into the boilers in which the reduction into pulp is effected. 
The pulp received from the boilers is conveyed to pulp-engines like 
those employed for the reduction of rags, and after having been worked 
in these engines is run through cleaning-machines, substantially like 
what are known as cylinder paper-making machines, but having no 
dryers. From the cleaning-machine the pulp is taken to the bleach- 
house, and after being bleached is fit to be made into paper in the same 
way as any other pulp. In the Flat Eock paper mills the wood pulp 
has mixed with it about twenty per cent, of straw pulp ; this mixture 
making a better paper than the wood pulp alone. The paper made at 
these mills is of a quality suitable for ordinary newspapers, and much 
better than is often used, and its price is three cents per pound less than 
paper of equal quality made from rags. 
OBCHID TEA. 
BY JOHN R. JACKSON. 
To have to look to the Orchid family for any large staple article of 
trade other than Vanilla, would be not only to look to a new field, but 
also to a very interesting one. The application of the leaves of one of 
these plants as a substitute for tea has lately come under my notice. 
The product has been heard of before in its native country, but never, 
so far as I know, in fashionable or civilised society. It has, however, 
now made its appearance in Paris as a regular article of trade, and is 
highly recommended as a most agreeable beverage* 
The plant yielding this new description of tea is the Angrcecum fra- 
grant of Thouars, an epiphytal orchid of the Island of Bourbon, where 
it is known and used by the natives under the name of " Faham." 
This word, once an obscure native name, is now, if we are to believe the 
enterprising French firm who has just introduced it, destined to become 
a " household word," for " Faham" is the name under which it is now 
sold in Paris, and the word appears in large letters upon the boxes in 
* Attention was drawn to this leaf as a tea substitute in vol. 1, page 114 
Editor. 
