182 TEA AND SILK FAEMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 



the principal features offered by the practice of tea and silk 

 farming in those countries where the industries in question have 

 been long and successfully conducted. Of such, the tea and silk 

 districts of China are evidently, on account of the antiquity and 

 prosperity of the pursuits in that empire, entitled to our earliest 

 and most careful examinatiou. 



From Chinese and other experience in various parts of Asia 

 has arisen the Oriental apophthegm that " wherever the mulberry 

 grows in profusion, there Nature indicates a suitable spot for 

 tea." Without asking the reader to place any more reliance 

 upon this dictum than would be bestowed upon the numerous 

 wise proverbs connected with the weather and agriculture so 

 populax and frequently quoted among ourselves, it may never- 

 theless serve for a convenient text, with this important qualifi- 

 cation, that the tea-shrub, in one or other of its varieties, will 

 thrive in localities too cold as well as too hot for the mulberry. 

 In China the districts more especially devoted to tea-culture are 

 comprehended between 23° and 25° iST. lat., and 115° and 122° 

 E. long., comprising portions of the provinces of Canton, Che- 

 Kiang, Fokien, Hounan, Hupeh, Kiang-Si, and Kiang-Su ; whilst 

 those in which sericiculture has attained its greatest development 

 are Che-Kiang, How-Quang, Kiang-Si, and Szechuen, all traversed 

 by the thirtieth parallel of latitude. Both tea and silk of exquisite 

 quality are produced together and separately in other parts of 

 China outside the figures just given; but it is in the districts named 

 that chasericulture has, in one or other of its branches, become 

 most firmly rooted, and has exhibited the most satisfactory results. 



A short paragraph may here be interpolated in explanation of 

 the meaning of the word chasericulture, now employed for almost 

 the first time to indicate the combined industries of tea and silk 

 farming. Although the Chinese, strictly speaking, understand 

 by the word cha only the watery infusion made from tea-leaves 

 for use as a beverage, yet in the course of their commercial 

 relations with Europeans it has also come to represent the dry 

 prepared leaves themselves as they are exported. Hence the 

 term cliaszc they at an early period applied, during the East 

 India Company's reign, to their tea inspectors and valuers at 

 Canton, a word which is apparently an abridgement of chcttszc, 

 which specifies the broken refuse, fannings, and dust from the 

 manufacture of tea for foreign markets, formerly used by the 

 Chinese manipulators in place of soap for cleansing their hands. 

 The next two syllables, seri, are derived from the Latin name 

 for silk, sericum, which, as well as sevica and sereinda, the 

 Romans applied to China, believing that the people referred to 

 in earlier times as the Seres, who were credited with the original 

 discovery, production, and trade in silk, resided in that country. 

 It is now thought that the Seres are more likely to have been 



