Tea manufacture is now the most important branch in the industry. We have advanced greatly in the last few years; but Tea manufacture, as regards economy in doing it, is yet comparatively in its infancy. Still we have done a great deal since the indigenous plant was discovered in the jungles of Assam, now nearly fifty years ago; we have advanced more in Tea manufacture than the Chinese, who have been making Tea many centuries. That is to say, I affirm that the Indian Tea planter of ordinary intelligence knows more of both Tea cultivation and Tea manufacture to-day than any of his Chinese contemporaries. The Chinaman grows Tea, and makes Tea, as he taught _us_ to do it twenty to thirty years ago. The pupil in this case has certainly beaten his master. We have made some improvements in Tea planting and Tea cultivation, but where we have left our teachers far behind is in manufacture. “Johnny” makes his Tea as his father made it before him, taught by his grandfather who made it the same way; and, for aught we know, no improvements, in that way, have taken place in the course of many centuries. All is hand labour; machinery to them is unknown. The most primitive ideas in Tea manufacture are still adhered to. In support of the latter, I will quote one instance: Tea, from time immemorial, has always been dried by charcoal in China; no other way is known there now. How is it here in India? A large proportion of the produce is fired with other fuel, aided by machinery; and it is only a question of time (and a very short time) when the whole of it will be thus prepared. I could quote other instances: let this suffice, for no comparison can be drawn between Tea manufacture as followed out in China and India in this year 1881. The former is as crude as it was two or five hundred years ago: the latter (though still far from perfection) in its many details, in its numerous machines cleverly contrived to save labour and better the Teas, is a striking illustration of the activity, the energy, the inventive genius of the Anglo-Saxon race! An Indian Tea factory, well set up with machinery--that is to say with a green-leaf drying apparatus, rolling machines, Tea dryers, equalisers, and sifting and sorting machines, all driven by an engine of 15-horse power--offers a wonderful contrast to a Chinese Tea factory, where all is handwork. But more strange still is the comparison alongside of the fact, that in the former case the industry dates back only some thirty years; in the latter many centuries.