3. Absence of the objectionable fumes of charcoal.
4. Immunity from fire in Tea-houses.
5. Greater speed in the firing process, and the saving of all the labour employed to make charcoal.
6. Reduced temperature in Tea-houses.
If all the advantages are, as I expect they will be, attained, the life of a Tea planter will be more pleasant than hitherto.
The following is the opinion of the new process expressed by the Darjeeling News of 1st August:—
“It has long been a question, which all planters were desirous to solve, if the fumes of charcoal were necessary to make Tea, that is to say, if any chemical action was produced on the Tea by the said fumes, and if not, whether it would not be possible to do the firing in some other and far cheaper way.
“The question has, we believe, been solved by Colonel Edward Money, and if so, for the invention is quite a new one, a boon of great magnitude will have been conferred on the Tea interest of India. We congratulate this district as being the birthplace of the improvement.
“The apparatus at present in use at Soom, and which we have seen working, is a rough and crude one made on the spot. This, and the more perfect plans from which larger and better ones are to be made, are readily shown by Colonel Money to anyone visiting Soom; but until the invention is patented, it is not well to describe it in print. Suffice if we say the invention is a remarkably simple one—cheap to erect—durable in its character, and the working thereof unattended with any expense whatever, beyond the cost of the fuel (which may be of any kind), and which of course will be many times less than charcoal.
“If true, as we hear, that it takes 3½ maunds of wood generally to make one maund of charcoal, and if also true, as Colonel Money suggests, that the caloric in one maund of wood equals the caloric in two maunds of charcoal, it then follows that each maund of wood, put into Colonel Money’s furnace, equals seven maunds of wood to make charcoal.