TEA MANUFACTURE.

87

is piled in drawers or on mats to ferment or oxidize, with
free access of air, This process is omitted in the manufacture
of green tea. In a couple of hours or so, depending on the
weather, the leaf assumes a coppery colour, and gives out a
peculiar smell. Experience is required to determine the
exact point at which to check the fermentation and place it
in the firing or drying machines. There are many types of
these machines, but all act by passing a current of hot dry
air through the damp fermented leaf until it is dry and
brittle, when it is removed, sifted into grades by a machine
composed of a series of moving sieves of different sizes of
mesh, and finally bulked (7.e., the whole mass of each grade
made on one or more days is thoroughly mixed together, so as
to secure as great uniformity of quality as possible), packed
in lead-lined boxes of about 100 1b., soldered up, labelled

INTERIOR OF FACTORY (ROLLING AND BREAKING)

with the name of the estate, and despatched to the port for
shipment.
The grades of tea usually prepared in Ceylon are known
(in order of quality and value) as orange pekoe, pekoe,
pekoe-gouchong, souchong, congou, and dust.
Green tea, made in the same general way as black, but
withered by means of steaming, and prepared without
fermentation, is graded as young hyson, hyson (1 and 2).
cunpowder. and dust.