Tae Commercial Reports of a few more of Her Majesty's Consuls in China have recently reached us. Speaking generally they do not contain much interesting information and very little that is new. The subjects of which they treat having in most cases been already fully reported on by the Commissioners of Customs there is very little of novelty to be found in the brief communications to the Foreign Office of the English Consuls. The Consul at Hankow goes into the matter of tea weighing at his port, and "cuts," or deductions, from the settled price, to which attention was drawn last year by one of our home contemporaries, and later on by ourselves. He does not defend these practices, though there is an evident desire on his part to make something of a defence for them, Short weights, aud.peary cuts he pats in ome sentence sirable result was arrived at or not, we were glad to hear that the disputes between buyers and sellers of teas this year had been few and of a trifling description. Mr. Alabaster regrets that the attempts to introduce the tablet compressed by the Goudron process into the colonies had so far not proved successful, as the losses on the tentative shipments had been heavy. He also points out that unless an ad valorem scale of duties on teas—founded on their graded values—is adopted, the concession obtained early last year by the Russian Minister on "log" tea will prove of no interest to British mor-chants. "Log" tea he describes as simply logs of compressed roots, twiga, broken tea leaves, tea dust and, it is said, grass and leaves of other weeds, which are ground down. Ibis seat to Tarkestan, though from its composition it might have been manufactured for the more refined markets of London or New York. An increase in the export of hides, rhubarb and tobacco is mentioned, bat the quantities of other articles sent away show a follo ing off. Writing of the transit pose system, Mr. Alabaster says it cone tinued to flourish, but in that part of the trade to which there is grave objection, the sale of the passes to enable the Chinese to bring down produce as foreign owned, when really there is no foreign interest concerned, he thinks that a heavy fine which had been inflicted on a teaman who had been convicted of bringing down his teas under a foreign pass, would have a deterrent effect. But Mr. Alabaster sees little hope of the system corns
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.