I omitted to extract the broker’s reports, but they were favourable. I think it likely this Dryer is well suited to small gardens, which cannot afford steam motive power.
Davidson’s Sirocco.—Many of these, over 200, have been set up in all the Tea districts; it has done good work in its time: had it not done so it would not so long (some years) have commanded attention. When it came out it was, I think, the best machine going. I doubt much that being the case now. It requires no motive power, and is thus, in that respect, cheap to work. The following letter to the Tea Gazette in many respects embodies my views of the machine:—
The Sirocco.
Dear Sir,—As both sides of a question, viz. for and against, should be stated before the public for their judgment, I think I may say that, as far as we have seen in print, the “Sirocco” is a “first rate Tea-drying machine.” I beg to state that all does not appear in print, though what does appear there may be quite true, and quite right too for the seller to get as many sales of it as he can, for who would be such an ass as to cry down his own invention or anything else he wished to profit by. The “Sirocco,” as I have seen (and I have seen over ten, and amongst them the latest improved ones), does not thoroughly fire off the Tea without burning it: the Tea must be taken out of the machine when three parts fired, and allowed to cool, when its own heat, and the fact of it being gathered in one place, give sufficient heat to finish the kutcha firing, but pucka batti is required after that. Again, the advertisement would lead one to suppose that the drying is effected by means of the draught of hot air entirely: now if this were the case, when the fires are first lighted in the machine, the hot air would at once be of sufficient heat to dry Tea; but this is not the case, for the whole iron work, in fact, the whole apparatus, iron work, &c., has to be heated up by fire, and when a little off red hot, the Tea is put in and fired. I do not mean to say that hot air does not ascend through the Tea, but I contend that the heat of the iron has more to do with the drying; there is no detriment to the Tea, I feel convinced, whether it is dried by hot iron or hot air, but there is a very considerable detriment to the machine. Let purchasers ask any engineer, or even blacksmith, how quickly iron burns away, and he can tell them.
Up to date no doubt the “Sirocco” has seen its run: over 200 are advertised as in use, but it is now beaten by two machines which have come out lately, and which beat the “Sirocco” entirely as to quantity dried and simplicity of working, and for durability should last any time by careful looking after. One is Robertson’s, which is firebrick, and the other Allen’s; both these machines for durability cannot be surpassed: the difference in results between the two is, that one dries every tray of Tea in the same time without turning over, and the other requires to have the Tea turned over and the trays changed, &c., as in the “Sirocco.”
The “Sirocco,” no doubt, was a good Tea-drying machine in its time, and the inventor deserves the greatest credit for it, but it has been improved upon, as is always inevitably the case in machinery.
I trust no offence will be taken by the “Sirocco” inventor, as such is not intended. Any answer of his will be gladly read.
Cachar. Yours faithfully, Pucka Tea.
There may have been an answer, but I did not see it.