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English: John Thomson: WHEN the market is about to open, the new teas are sorted out into qualities, or " chops," as they are usually termed. Samples of these assorted teas are then submitted to the foreign merchants, who carefully test the colour, size, make, taste and smell of the leaves, and their general appearance, wet and dry. When the professional tea-taster has settled all these points, a bargain is struck for so-many thousand chests of the various descriptions of tea, and a day is appointed for examining and weighing the whole. The process of weighing is as follows:— The lead-lined chests (with which we are all familiar), soldered up and ready for exportation, are piled in symmetrical blocks in the weighing-room of the Chinese tea-house. Narrow passages are left between the rows to admit the foreign inspector, and he places his mark upon a score or more of chests, and directs them to be removed, opened and examined on the spot. This done, they are con- veyed to the scales, and it is now that the caution of the inspector is called most prominently into play, for experience has taught the practised Chinese weigher how to poise his apparatus by placing his hands lightly upon the ropes of the balance, so that, by a slight effort on his part, the scale may be made to turn either way and confer an appearance of favour on a purchaser, whom in reality he is cheating out of his goods. Fair dealing, however, is as much a characteristic among Chinese merchants of repute as among the mercantile classes of our own community, and the tea chests selected, as described, from the bulk of the cargo, generally show that the transaction has been fulfilled with scrupulous honesty and exactitude.