Of course the chemical value of Tea as a beverage depends upon the presence of volatile oil, theine, tannin, and gluten--the four substances forming its most important ingredients--and the proportions in which these exist. If Tea be not genuine, or if it undergoes the artificial process of colouring, its character and efficacy become proportionately impaired. It is unfortunately too true that the market is glutted with Tea--which is either not Tea at all, or else is excessively adulterated. On the testimony of the House of Commons, “millions of pounds of sloe, liquorice, and ash-tree leaves, are every year mixed with Chinese Teas for England.” It is well known that the leaves of the Charrapal, a Californian bush, are largely exported to China, when they return packed under the title of Tea. A startling exposure was made a few years since, of the tea-rubbish styled “Finest New Season Kaisow,” and “Fine Oanfa Congou,” sold in bond at 1¼d. to 1¾d. per lb. Upon analysis, the former was found to contain an enormous amount of mineral matter, chiefly iron filings; while the latter proved a mixture of redried tea-leaves, straw, fragments of matting, rice-husks, willow leaves, and the excrement of silkworms. The “Maloo Mixture,” likewise, once gained an unenviable notoriety, as did the “Extra Fine Moyune Gunpowder” put up for sale by auction in Mincing Lane, and in which Dr. Letheby discovered over 40 per cent. of iron filings and 19 per cent. of silica. Tea is adulterated in two ways. The foreign dealers first practise their arts upon it by having recourse to dried leaves, and by “facing”--a process which necessitates the use of Prussian blue, silica, gypsum, plumbago, lamp-black, ferruginous earth, and other abominations. Mr. Fortune, in his interesting work, reveals the whole secret. Upon reading his graphic account of how Tea is elaborated for the European market, one almost turns aghast! And with good reason, as there might be ample cause to suspect “death in the pot.” Indeed, the people of China are themselves disgusted at the tricks of traders, who carry on their fraudulent practices without concealment. A Chinese journal thus gives expression to the public sentiment: “The wonder is that such stuff (referring to redried and recoloured leaves) should be suffered to be manufactured, much less to be shipped as a lawful export, for Chinese law expressly prohibits the re-manipulation of Tea that has once been used, on the obvious and common-sense principle that such a trade is necessarily, in its very essence, fraudulent. Yet, in the face of this well-known maxim, it is one of the thousand proofs which we have of the utter rottenness of the present administration, that all round the settlement, in every convenient open space, large quantities of what is termed, with ominous propriety, the ‘mixture,’ lie exposed to the sun at noon-day; in some cases within a hundred yards of the mixed court yamen. And not only so, but there are