THE ADULTERATION OF TEA.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1701, 2 August 1879, Page 3

THE ADULTERATION OF TEA.

M. Husson, a chemist at Toul, has been investigating this subject, and laid the result of his researches before the French Academy 01 Sciences. The leaf of the tea-tree, from its great commercial value, has long exercised the ingenuity of fraudulent traders, and they seem to have attained a degree of perfection in counterfeiting the natural product, which is really remarkable. A very few figures will suffice to show the interest they have in thus falsifying this precious leaf. France imports on an average 270,000 kilos, a year, a consumption of eight grammes per head. But England takes nearly 200 limes as much, as she consumes 1600 grammes (more than 21b) a head, the whole amounting to a value of many millions of francs annually ; consequently no ingenious proceeding is omitted in the Celestial Empire to palm on the outer barbarian inferior or damaged merchandise, or even a simple imitotion. Add to this that the European merchants, or many of them, are by no means behind their Chinese brethren in the arts of imitation. The Celestials, in order to give the inferior or false loaf the aroma of tea, frequently mix a quantity of it with certain flowers, especially those of the olea fragrans (a species of olive), the gardinia florida (a tropical plant), the Jssmiuum sambac, &o. Among the leaves of other plants found mixed with tea are those of the prunus (plum-tree), the camelia sasanigua (Japanese camelia), &e. It seems even that in some parts of China a special cultivation is carried on for this express purpose, where the vegetable productions most in favor are willow leaves, plucked in April and May, which are subjected to a slight fermentation, then dried and rolled and mixed with real tea to the extent of 10 or 20 per cent. This practice, as ingenious as profitable, was inaugurated in Shanghai about fifteen years ago, and is continually extending. The Chinese carry it on openly, and seem to think that they need not trouble themselves about their customers, as they manage to sell all their merchandise. However, the fact must be added that, in the principal tea growing districts, the Government has an efficient stall of inspectors, so that the goods are despatched in a pure state. But this precaution is of little avail, for as soon as the boxes reach the shipping ports the merchants or .brokers commence their malpractices, as they are not under official surveillance. But the very perfection of the Chinese manipulation is the manufacture of green tea, nearly all the varieties of which are more or less colored artificially. With a few simple substances—some of them, however, are of a poisonous nature—such as graphite (plumbago), Prussian blue, indigo, curcuma (turmeric root), kaolin, &0., they can produce a tea of any desired tint, with or without the true leaf of the shrub. Europeans, with their superior chemical knowledge, have surpassed the Asiatics in their fraud in the use of still more deadly drugs, the chromate of lead, arseniate of copper, without speaking of the comparatively innocuous substances, sulphate of iron, steatite, the carbonates of lime, magnesia, Ac., so that the cup which cheers but not inebriates may still be one it would be wise to avoid without a preliminary investigation.