The translation reads thus:—
“The Flourishing Farm.—This is truly the very best Tea, prepared with additional labour and free from colouring matter. The educated (or experienced) merchant, who is competent to consider it, will please to take notice of its clear and genuine quality. We are honoured by your good orders, and shall proceed at once to the packing.”
The testimony afforded by several eminent analytical authorities in favour of Messrs. Horniman’s importations is so satisfactory that nothing further can well be desired. The earliest of those documents is from Dr. Andrew Ure, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry, who declares that upon chemical and microscopic examination of the samples taken from the bonded warehouses, he “found them (both black and green) to be perfectly free from all extraneous colouring matter, and in every respect genuine Tea.”
Professor Ure further observes:—“The characteristic appearance of your green Tea, namely the dull olive hue, is unmistakably different to the bright blue tint of the ordinary green Teas of commerce, which is artificially imparted. This particular feature offers a perfect safeguard for the purity of the Tea, in contrast with such sophisticated Teas as I have sometimes been called upon to examine professionally for the Honourable Board of Excise, and which were coated with various powders that rendered them more or less unwholesome for use as an alimentary beverage.”
Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall, Analyst of the County Sanitary Commission, and a well known writer and authority on dietetics, after minutely describing the tests to which he subjected the Tea submitted to him for analysis, concludes in the following words:—“These investigations enable me confidently to assume that the consumers of Tea, now having fairly the choice of both the sophisticated and the pure, will not be slow in choosing between the wholesome natural kinds and those which are ‘got up’ for appearance, and in order to realise higher prices through their defects being hidden or glazed over, with the powdered colours employed.” The latest report is from the same authority, and bears a recent date. The opinion at first pronounced is therein but more strongly confirmed. The Tea is characterised as being “perfectly pure, of superior quality, and free from facing.” Moreover, the packages which the analyst purchased from some of Messrs. Horniman’s Agents, he affirms, after careful examination, “to correspond as regards purity and excellence of quality with those Teas obtained from the Docks and from Messrs. Horniman’s Wholesale Warehouses, in London.”
Nor do authors and publicists of weight refrain from offering willing testimony in favour of Messrs. Horniman’s special importation. Dr. Scoffern remarks how “Its delicious flavour fully confirms its entire freedom from the usual powdered colour;” that he is “very partial to Tea;” and that, in consequence of having long taken the pure beverage, his palate had become “the more critical.”
The only certain way to obtain truly cheap and choice Tea is to purchase the leaf without the usual mineral “facing” powder. That the public highly appreciate real economy is evident from the large and increasing trade carried on for the past forty years by Messrs. Horniman & Co., the original importers of the pure Tea. Further, the Agents of the Firm throughout the Kingdom, through Messrs. Horniman’s direct operations, offer great advantages to the public, as they sell in the most distant neighbourhoods the same reliable article, at the same fixed price, as their most extensive City or West-end Agents. In another article on Tea Consumption, appears the following: “Since the recent Parliamentary Report on Tea appeared, there has been a more general disinclination to use any that has been covered by the Chinese with mineral colour, for this report exposed the fact that it is done to hide the brownness of wintry growths, and enable them, when so disguised, to be sold mixed off with the best at high rates. From a lengthened experience I can bear testimony to the excellent and delicious character of Horniman’s pure Tea; while I am convinced that all who appreciate a strong, rich, full-flavoured beverage, possessing in addition a delicious flavour and aroma, must arrive at the like conclusion.”
