Though machinery reduces the cost of production, and in more than one case improves the quality of Tea, and planters know it, the difficulty before them to-day is to know which is the best machine for each operation. Unanimity on this point is not to be expected yet. One swears by Jackson, another by Kinmond, others by Ansell, Barry, Lyle, the inventor of the Sirocco, and so on. The machines and names of inventors are many, and each has its disciples. Perhaps the most favourite rolling machines are Jackson’s and Kinmond’s, but we see the latter has just produced what he calls a “Centrifugal Rolling Machine” which he thinks will supersede all others. We have not seen it, though it is at work on several gardens, and so can give no opinion about it; but another of Kinmond’s machines, his Dryer, we know well. It was long a moot point if Tea could be efficiently fired by any other agent than charcoal. Many affirmed that the fumes of charcoal were necessary; and when, years ago, Colonel Money, so well known by his writings in Tea matters, affirmed from experiments that charcoal was not necessary, but that any fuel would do the work, few believed him, for people said it was impossible to credit that the Chinese would have gone on using charcoal (so much more expensive than other fuel) for centuries, were it not a necessity. What Colonel Money then predicted has already come to pass. Much of the Tea now produced in India never sees charcoal at all, and it is very certain that in two or three years all Indian Tea will be fired by machinery. We say this is certain simply because, apart from the saving effected by using other fuel, the value of Teas fired by machinery is increased. It is natural it should be so because, by the use of the best machines invented for that purpose, the heat can be regulated to a nicety, an impossibility by the old mode of charcoal firing.