Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-22
WAR BOUND COUNTRIES
 LIKE TEA AND COFFEE
More Than Two and One-haIf Billion Pounds of Latter Consumed by Peo- pie of World Yearly.
csuectal to The Bulletin.)

Especial to The Bullet1n.) Washington. D. C., Feb. 21.-''With their ports of import closed and their trade with neighboring neutral ports shortage in the lands of the war bound powers in tea and coffee, the twin harbingers of day throughout the civilized world. With the exception of Russia, all parts of Europe begin the day with coffee just as does this country. The Russian day begins, and steeps, and ends in tea. The Ger man day begins in coffee and ends in tea and beer. In Austria, as in France, the day runs from pot of coffee to deni-tasse. In Turkey, coffee takes the place of the soda fountain and the saloon, beginning and ending all things. A shortage in these two most widely accepted drinks must work a considerable discount upon comfort" " In these words the National Geogra- phic Society begins a pleasing little story of the coffee pot and the tea urn in their relations to the European War and to the comfort of humanity. The story then goes on:
 ''Tyhe people of the world annually consume more than two and one-half billion pounds of coffee-enough to load a train of cars reaching from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Three fourths of this is grown in Brazil, a country that has become rich from it's coffee industry alone. Europe and North America bear approximately the same relation to the consumption of coffee that Brazil does to its pro- duction, these two continents using nearly four -fifths of all the coffee the world produces.
 Holland is the greatest coffee drinking nation on the globe. It uses 10 Is pounds per capita annually, while we use 1-2 pounds, Germany Is pounds, Austria Hungary ? 2-5 pounds, and the United Kingdom 2-S of a pound On the other hand, we use less than one pound of tea per capita, where the United Kingdom uses nearly seven pounds Canada is about twO-thirds English and one third American in it's use of coffee and tea; it shows a decided preference for tea, but drinks less of it than the mother country, making up the differ ence with coffee. The Germans and the Austrians use only a negligible quantity of tea.
 The coffee plant is shrub which, under cultivation, grows from 4 to 6 feet high. In it's wild state it grows three or four times as high as in it's cultivated state. The dwarfing of the plant increases the crop and facilitates picking. The leaves are of a fresh and have an odor strongly resembling jasmine.
 Ire green coffee berry of commerce js nothing more nor less than the sccI!s of the coffee cherry. These cherries turn crimson on ripening. They are then picked, the pulp is taken off by machinery, and the two huSks which lie between the pulp and the seeds themselves are removed. The coffee has to be thoroughly dried before the husks can be taken off, and on many plantations there are whole acres of concrete floors for this drying process.
 When run through machinery for the removal of the husks, these lat ter are blown away like chaff, and the coffee grains are run over sieves so arranged as to grade them and bag them according to size, ready to be stripped to he worlds markets.
 ''The growing of tea is largely an Asiatic industry. The tea plant is a hardy evergreen shrub, growing from 12 to Is feet high in it's wild state but dwarfed under cultivation. It prefers subtropical climate where the rainfall approXinateS 50 inches a year. After the leaves are picked the tea reaches it's commercial state by two routes-one producing the black variety of tea and the other the green.
 ''The leaves are first dried in the sun in the case of the black tea, and in pans over fire in the case of the green tea. In both processes the leaves are next rolled until soft. Black tea is next fermented, then fired, and finally sorted. Green tea is withered again following the rolling process sorted into bags, and then slowly roasted.
 Tn China most of the tea gardens are small, each farmer producing enough for the consumption of his own family, and a little surplus which he sends to market.
 The Department of Agriculture has interested itself in the production of tea in this country, and has issued a bulletin which reveals the fact that in South Carolina and elsewhere on the southern Atlantic seaboard America has proved a successful grower of this plant