CURING AND FIRING. As a general rule in China the small growers do not prepare the tea for market, simply curing them up to a certain point in which condition they dispose of it to the merchant or commission man, locally known as “tea-men,” who send agents into the country and who buy it in small quantities from the growers and carry it to _hongs_ or warehouses established at different points in the tea districts. In this preliminary preparation the leaves when first collected by the grower are spread out in light layers on straw mats and exposed to the sun until they are thoroughly withered, when they are gathered up and placed on bamboo trays and triturated until a large portion of the sap or juice is pressed out. After this operation they are again exposed to the sun and then dried in rattan cylinders, separated in the middle by a partition, covered on top, and underneath of which is a chafing vessel of ignited charcoal. The leaves when thrown into this concavity are constantly agitated until the process is completed, finishing the cultivator’s work, the leaves being delivered to the merchant or factor in this state. The quantity for a “chop” or shipment being selected according to the quality of the leaf and the district producing it. The merchant or factor has them picked over by women and children to remove the stems and fibre which still remain attached to the young sprouts before completing its final preparation for the foreign market. The drying, buying and transporting of the leaves from the gardens to the hongs occupies considerable time, during most of which the but partially prepared tea is very much at the mercy of the elements. Tea leaves, when first picked, possess none of the color, odor or flavor of the tea of commerce, these properties being developed by the numerous processes to which they are subjected in the operation of curing and firing, and for which the Chinese have a long vocabulary of technical terms. The definition of which, as vouchsafed to the “outside barbarians,” are intended more to mystify rather than elucidate the art. The operations of Tea manufacture may, however, be classified in the following sequence: Evaporating—Fermenting—Sunning—Firing—Rolling; each process having to be carried to a certain specific point, or if under or overdone, the leaf is spoiled and the tea correspondingly injured.