The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-10-21

now the machine does aDouC Jnree times
 that amount in one hour. The rolled
 leaf is then taken to a cool, dark, moist room, where it is spread out on ee-
 ment floor, or in long trays, and cov-
 cred with a wet cloth, where it is left
 to ferment or oxidize, which turns the
 leaf a dull, rusty color. This fermenta-
 tion is most important part of the
 preparation of the tea leaf, and upon
 the process depend the flavor and ap-
 pearanee. There is no rule for the
 length of time of the operation, one
 gardens product requiring six hours,
 while another may take only two. Af-
 ter fermentation has proceeded far
 enough, the leaf is rolled again for a
 few minutes, when it is taken to the
 firing machine, and subjected to a blast
 of hot air, between two hundred and
 forty and three hundred degrees Fah-
 renheit, for twenty minutes. This in- stantly stops fermentation and removes
 the moisture from the leaf, and causes
 it to curl up and blacken. It comes out
 of the machine three-fourths fired, and
 is then again fired at a much lower temperature. 1t is now dry and crisp, and is the tea of commerce. During the process of curling it is estimated
 that about three-quarters of the weight of the green leaf is lost. The tea is then taken to the sorting
 room, where it is first spread on a ce-
 ment floor, and women carefully pick out any foreign matter, such as little sticks and pieces of stone, which some how find their way into the mass of tea. It is then put into a long sieve in which are wire meshes of different sizes. The tea which drops through the different
 meshes is called ''unbroken tea," which is the finest grade, as it is made up of the tip of the bud and the delicate part of the leaf. The tea which does not find ! its way through the meshes traverses l the entire length of the sieve and falls into large baskets, from which 1t is taken and placed in machine to be
 broken up fine and again sifted and au- | tomatically sorted into various grades.
 The names given to the different quail ties are as follows: The unbroken
 teas are divided into Flowery Orange Pekoe, Orange Pekoe, Pekoe and Pekoe | Soucheng. The broken leaves include | Broken Orange Pekoe, Broken Pekoe Souchong, Broken Pekoe, Earnings and Dust. The division into these classes is
 not uniform among the different tea | gardens, and as the names given to the I various grades are more or less option l al some confusion arises when at- I tempts at comparison are made. Just
 before it is packed into lead-lined chests l containing one hundred pounds 1t is re | , ssLlo IA on " of moisture gathered while being l worked.
 l Consult General R. V. Patterson, at l Calcutta, says that the area under tea
 at the end of 1902 was 525,252 acres, nearly two-thirds being in the valleys l of the Brahmaputra and Surna, which contain as much as 339,640 acres. In l Bengal the area under tea was 1855, ,15S acres, or about twenty five per cent. of I the whole Its cultivation is therefore I to the extent of nine-tenths in the two I provinces of Assam and Bengal, the ] other tenth being divided between northern and southern India. The area
 added to tea growing during the last l five years was about fifty-five thousand ], acres. Under the Encouragement of l low prices of tea, caused by placing on 4 the markets more than their consuming.
 capacity, endeavors have been made to aI restrict the cultivation and production .I and to supply better quality in small 1l CT quantity, SO that the addition to the 5l tea area in the last two years was only ,l about two thousand acres, considerable \ areas on which tea could not be grown with profit, at the present range of ,I prices, having been abandoned. From I Assam reports were received from eight il hundred and five estates for the year 1902 with an area of 339040 acres, the average area of an estate being about .l four hundred and twenty acres. In sl Bengal three hundred acres was the av-
 craze for four hundred and fifty-two es- tates and in Ira vancore the average l for seventy-f1ve estates was three hum A dred and thirty-seven acres. Tn other \ localities the average of the estates is l much smaller These figures only refer to tea-bearing acres. While the area l has increased since 1885 by eighty-five I per cent, the increase in production has
 been 1677 per cent.
 . The actual production in 1902 is re- l ported to have been about one hundred j, and ninety million pounds, which is fif- E ty-six per cent. larger than the reported production of ten years previously, in }. 1892. The average of the last five years the yield of tea to the acre-dividing ! the total yield by the area of land bear- !, ing mature plants, has been as follows: .l Assam Bramaputra valley, 3SS pounds; ,. Surma valley, ATS pounds. Bengal :, Duars, 4sS pounds; Darjeeling, PTS \ pounds. The number of persons em- ], ployed in the industry in 1902 was 606,S ,S3C ,; permanently, and 90,94O temporarily ;; Of the production the United Kingdom