Our succeeding remarks will fall, we fear, like a bomb upon many a tea-table, and stagger teetotalism in its stronghold. A drunkard's stomach is sometimes exhibited at total-abstinence lectures, in every stage of congestion and inflammation, painted up to match the fervid eloquence of the lecturer. If tea is our only refuge from the frightful maladies entailed upon us by fermented liquors, we fear the British public is in a perplexing dilemma. Ladies, there is death in the teapot! Green-tea drinkers, beware! There has always been a vague idea afloat in the public mind about hot copper plates--a suspicion that gunpowder and hyson do not come by their colour honestly. The old duchess of Marlborough used to boast that she came into the world before "nerves were in fashion." We feel half inclined to believe this joke had a great truth in it; for since the introduction of tea, nervous complaints of all kinds have greatly increased; and we need not look far to find one at least of the causes in the teapot. There is no such a thing as pure green tea to be met with in England. It is adulterated in China; and we have lately learnt to adulterate it at home almost as well as the cunning Asiatic. The pure green tea made from the most delicate green leaves grown upon manured soil, such as the Chinese use themselves, is, it is true, wholly untainted; and we are informed that its beautiful bluish bloom, like that upon a grape, is given by the third process of roasting which it undergoes. The enormous demand for a moderately-priced green tea which has arisen both in England and China since the opening of the trade, has led the Hong merchants to imitate this peculiar colour; and this they do so successfully as to deceive the ordinary judges of the article. Black tea is openly coloured in the neighbourhood of Canton in the most wholesale manner. Mr. Robert Fortune, in his very interesting work, "The Tea Districts of China and India," gives us a good description of the manner in which this colouring process is performed, as witnessed by himself:-- "Having procured a portion of Prussian-blue, he threw it into a porcelain bowl, not unlike a chemist's mortar, and crushed it into a very fine powder. At the same time a quantity of gypsum was produced and burned in the charcoal fires which were then roasting the teas. The object of this was to soften it, in order that it might be readily pounded into a very fine powder, in the same manner as the Prussian-blue had been. The gypsum, having been taken out of the fire after a certain time had elapsed, readily crumbled down, and was reduced to powder in the mortar. These two substances, having been thus prepared, were then mixed together in the proportion of four parts of gypsum to three parts of Prussian-blue, and formed a light blue powder, which was then ready for use.