Tea Leaves Under a Microscope.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 2, 15 July 1905, Page 42

Tea Leaves Under a Microscope.

“Dave a look,” said the histologist. And he rose from the beautiful, delicate microscope and his companion took his place. There was a little fiddling and adjusting of tiny screws. Then the tyro'said: , “L’gh! Ghastly! What have wa here? A railroad wreck?” “You are looking,” answered the histologist, “at a part of the remains of a Ceylonese caterpillar.” He withdrew that slide and put another iu its place. "Another tragedy?” the tyro asked. “The remnants of a beetle,” the histologist replied. A third slide was placed beneath the lens. .“This,” said the tyro, “should be a battlefield.” “It is only,” returned the scientist, “’a commingling of the desiccated fragments of a fly, a centipede, a moth, and a slug.” The tyro yawned. "Histology is interesting.” he said in a bored voice. “Where did you get these specimens?" "Out of a packet of tea.” “A packet of tea? What kind of tea?” "Ordinary tea.” “Heavens! I am a tea drinker. Explain yourself.” The histologist, smiling, said: "Tea grows on bushes. The leaves are plucked by hand. Imagine yourself stripping rosebush after rosebush, miles on miles, of their leaves. Well, that is what tea picking is like.” "The native pickers work fast. They pick as many as twenty-five pounds of leaves- a day—a bundle bigger than a man. “Now, the tea plant is the prey of a hundred insects, and the picker in his haste doesn’t pause to bpish off each leaf or to wash it, for he works, as we say, by piece work. “The picked leaves are dried on charcoal fires. They shrivel under the heat, and the insect larvae and chrysalids among them change to dust. This dust looks, to the ordinary eye, like leaf fragments. But under the microscope it looks, as you remarked, like an insect railroad wreck or a pigmy battlefield. It tastes like —but .vou know as well as I do what it tastes like.” “To-morrow,” said the other. “I am going to bring some of my wife’s tea here to examine with vou.”