Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/382

368 (1877) provides about 8 pounds of coffee and 1 pound of tea to each inhabitant. The importation of coffee, in Europe, is stated to furnish for each inhabitant, in France, 2 pounds; in Belgium, 13 pounds; in Holland, 21 pounds; in Sweden, 6 pounds; in Norway, 9 pounds; in Austria, 2 pounds; in Russia, pound; in Italy, 1 pound. In Great Britain, the consumption of coffee has been on a decrease for the last thirty years. The tea consumption in that country amounts to 2 pounds to each individual. The total amount of tea consumed on the globe would give about pound to each of its inhabitants.

The grades of coffee in the market come from different varieties of the tree, and from different countries where it is cultivated. The various kinds of tea result primarily from differences in the age of the leaf when gathered. The choicest teas are from the younger and more succulent leaves, the earliest leaf producing flowery pekoe, the next orange pekoe, then pekoe and souchong, and from the oldest leaves bohea proper. Differences of manufacture have already been noted for black and green teas. The processes of manufacture in China and India are necessarily modified to enable the tea to bear sea transportation without injury, and it must be accepted that the finest tea can only be obtained in tea-growing lands. When American enterprise shall have devised such means of preparation as may dispense with the present lavish use of hand-labor in Asia, then we may have tea ranking above tobacco in the products of the Southern United States.

The adulterations of tea comprise mineral matters, foreign leaves, and spent tea. The food-analysts of Great Britain have fixed the maximum limit of eight per cent of mineral matter, including three per cent to be soluble in water, and a minimum limit of thirty per cent aqueous extract. The color-facing of turmeric, prussian-blue, and gypsum, though not excluded as fraudulent, is characteristic of poorer qualities of green teas. The adulterations of coffee, sold in the ground condition, are multifarious, all sorts of roasted grains, nuts, and shells having been taken for this use, but the chiccory-root has been the most extensive admixture, and in Great Britain has been in actual demand by the consumer. Even the entire coffee-berry is sometimes counterfeited—a suggestion from the legendary wooden nutmegs of New England invention. But we may trust that the great body of tea and of unground coffee in commerce is nearly or quite innocent of adulteration. No positively hurtful impurities are apt to be found, but not the less all falsifications of these or other articles of food should be severely punished. It is clearly a misdemeanor to tamper with the food which any man may select by its distinctive name, in his own discretion, for his personal use.

Notwithstanding the adoption of theine-containing beverages by mankind at large, we can not hesitate to commend that robust habit which discards all dependence on adventitious food, even on so mild a stimulus as that of the tea-cup, and preserves through life the fresh