WHAT IS GREEN TEA.

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1896, 3 September 1874, Page 3

WHAT IS GREEN TEA.

"Importers, with large stocks of green tea on hand will peruse with consternation," remarks the "Manchester Guardian" of June, "the judgment of the Court of Queen Bench in the Bhkenhead case. Pure green tea is to be had ; but the article which commonly sold under that name is a bedaubed imposture, faced or painted with gypsum and Prussian blue. This adulteration has been notorious in the trade. The wholesale merchant and the retail dealer have been in no state of ignorance as to the process by which the article has had imparted to it its particular shade of colour. It has always been recognised as a sophisticated tea, and in selling it the grocers appear to have fortified themselves by thecovenient assumption that what was known to the pnblic — in other words that when a customer asked for a pound of green tea what he expected to receive was not the pure article, but a mixture of tea, gypsum, and Prussian blue. The Birkenhead magistrates, in the case which recently came before them, declined to admit this view, and convicted the tradesman who had been found disposing of tea which, on analysis, yielded the substances mentioned. This decision the Court of Queen's Bench has now ratified. Mr Justice Qnain thought the conviction was wrong. Practically the shopkeeper sold tlie only artfcle known as green tea; he did not alter it at all, but sold it as he bought it." On the other hand, the Lord Chief Justice Blackburn, and Mr Justice Archibald, declared that if there was adulteration in fact, and the article was sold as "genuine,"ano2encehad|beencommitted within the mepurig of the statue. In this cases adulteration had been proved and the Court held that the article had clearly been sold as (t genuine," for if it had not been offered as such, the purchaser would not have bought it. After this, grocers had better look to their green teas."