TEA AND SILK FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 205 



great national enterprise these pages are intended to advocate, 

 without the co-operation of some kindred or allied industry ; 

 and we are at present aware of none so nearly related to it, and 

 in every sense so well adapted to form a twin enterprise on the 

 same estate and under the same general management, as the 

 cultivation and preparation of tea. 



As this essay has no pretensions to be regarded as a treatise 

 on the mysteries of tea preparation and sericiculture, the reader 

 need not look upon these pages as a text-book ; yet it is due to 

 the importance of the subject that some little information should 

 be given, in order that he may judge of the desirability of link- 

 ing those industries together in New Zealand. It will also be 

 judicious to confine such remarks in the meantime as much as 

 possible to Chinese methods and practice, as in that country 

 chasericulture had its earliest commercial home, and has there 

 attained its widest development. With this necessary introduc- 

 tion we shall now say 



Sometliiii// ctbout Green Tea. 



One of the chief approaches to the green tea district of Moyueu 

 is the Poyang Lake, opening into the great river Yangtse-Kiang, 

 a magnificent sheet of fresh water, about ninety miles in length 

 with a breadth of about twenty miles. Its waters lave the towns 

 of Yao-chow, the chief outlet for the green tea district ; Xeuchang, 

 the principal centre towards which much of the black teas gravi- 

 tate ; Sueyhung, where the red leaf teas of the provinces of 

 Keangsi, Ganhway, and Fokien are made up for exportation ; 

 and not far from its margin stand the world-famed porcelain 

 factories of Kini^-te-Chinof. Four naviGfable rivers flow into the 

 Poyang Lake, one of which, the Kan-Kiang, is nearly double the 

 length of our Scottish Clyde, and the lake communicates by two 

 separate channels of considerable depth witli the river Yangtse- 

 Kiang, one of these being at a point about 436 miles from the 

 sea. The adjoining provinces of Keangsi and Fokien have a 

 poi)ulation of about 45,000,000 of industrious Chinese, who pro- 

 duce wheat, barley, rice, oranges, lemons, tea, mulberries, silk, 

 sugar, gums, tallow, and all the metals. From these statistics it 

 will be gathered that the neighbourhood of the Poyang Lake pre- 

 sents an epitome of the whole industrial pursuits and activity of 

 the eni[)ire, and may be relied on as a Hording accurate glimpses 

 of many of its industries, particularly those connected with tea. 



Although several well-marked species of tea plants are culti- 

 vated in China, ))otanical students are by no means agreed 

 that they may not all have originally emanated fruni the same 

 plant, which is indigenous to tiie Wooe-or i^ohea hills in the 

 province of Fokien, and that the changes eifected have been 



