Some planters have proposed to do away with charcoal altogether under McMeekin’s drawers, supplying its place by hot air. The first point in considering this invention is the question whether the fumes of charcoal, as some assert, _are_ necessary to make good Tea. If they are _not_ necessary (that is, if they produce no chemical effect on the Tea, and therefore heat from wood devoid of smoke would do as well) there can be no doubt such heat would be cheaper, and more under command, by this or some other plan. Are then the fumes of charcoal necessary? I do not know that anyone can answer the query. I certainly cannot, for I have never made Tea with any other agent than charcoal, and I have never met with more than one planter who had. He said the Tea was not good. Still it would, I think, require very careful and prolonged experiments to establish the fact either way. Speaking theoretically, as it _appears_, the only effect of charcoal is to drive all the moisture out of the roll and thus make it Tea, I cannot but believe other heat would do as well. It is, however, a question that only experience can solve.[44] I have now (four years since the above was written, and at the time I am preparing the second edition of this essay) been for some time employed on experiments with a view to settle the above question. Whether I shall be able to devise a simple apparatus to effect the manufacture of Tea without charcoal is doubtful, but I can, I think, now safely affirm that the fumes of charcoal are _not_ necessary to make Tea. On this point I am myself quite satisfied. The advantages of making Tea with any fuel (wood, coal, or anything else) would be numerous:-- 1.--Economy. 2.--Absence of charcoal fumes. 3.--Less chance of fire in Tea Houses. 4.--Probably reduced temperature in Factories. 5.--Great saving of labour. 6.--Saving of fuel--for it takes much wood to make a given weight of charcoal. In addition to all the above, the wholesale destruction of forests that now takes place in all Tea Districts, in order to supply the charcoal for Tea, would be much lessened.[45] I have seen a machine advertised for packing Tea, that is to say, for so pressing it down that a large quantity shall go into a chest. I have never seen the machine, and so cannot say how it works, but I do not think such a machine at all necessary. By the mode of packing, described at page 150, as much Tea as a chest will hold _with safety_ can be put into it. If more were forced in, the chest would probably come to pieces in transit. I see a sifting machine is now being advertised--“Jackson’s sifting machine.” I have seen drawings of it, but not the machine itself. In the one respect, that it is much larger than anything used hitherto, it is more likely to succeed.