6

AGRICULTURE.

The coolies bring in their day’s plucking to the factory,
usually a large well-equipped building, containing the most
modern machinery, and worked by water or steam power.
The “leaf” is examined and weighed and the amount
plucked by each cooly recorded, the wage depending partly
on the amount plucked.
After the leaf has been weighed it is taken to the upper
floor of the factory and thinly spread out on light open work
shelves of jute hessian (canvas), known as tats, to wither.
In good weather it becomes limp and flaccid in about
eighteen hours, but in wet weather artificial heat is employed
and a current of warm dry air drawn throuch the withering

WITHERING TEA LEAF.

loft. The properly withered leaf is next thrown down
through shoots into the rollers or rolling machines in the
ground floor. A roller consists essentially of a table with a
central depression to hold the leaf, and a hopper above it, the
two moving over one another with an eccentric motion,
Pressure to any required extent can be put upon the mass
of leaf that is being rolled, and at the end of an hour or
so the door in the bottom of the table is opened and the
“roll” falls out, the leaves all twisted and clinging together
in masses, which are then broken up in a machine termed
a roll breaker, to which is usually attached a sifter that
separates the coarser leaf from the finer. After this the leaf