10 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[July i, 1882. 



Dun in the Northern Himalayas, aud Darjiling iu 

 the Eastern. In those [ilaoes China tea. flourished and 

 still flouriahes, after a fashion superior to anything 

 known iu China itself. But it is the vigorous, large- 

 leaved, luxuriant aud yet hardy hybrid tea whicli 

 has converted Assam from a useless tract of jungle 

 into one of the most promising provuices of the ludinn 

 Empire. There is much to be done, for Assam with 

 five millions of population hiis only 9,145 si:|ua"e nnles 

 cleared and cultivated. But of this area. 240 square 

 miles (in acres 153,(157) are iu tea, spread over 1,055 

 plantations, or "gardens" as they call them in India. 

 That fact accounts for the pi-ogress, the trade aud 

 the prospect of future prosperity connected with what 

 was once a country of large population, possessed of 

 wealth and a knowledge of tlie arts, as numeroui 

 monuments prove, but wliich had relnpsed into jungle 

 and miasma. The country is being cleared and planted 

 and penpled by immigrants from other parts of India, 

 led by European captains of industry. The recent 

 labour law is a concession to the importance and 

 value of the tea enterprize, and ere long the whdom 

 remote jungle will be joined to the rest of India, 

 not only by river navigation but by means of the 

 iron highway. The railway has, indeed, already made 

 great advances. The enterprize which has, we maj' 

 say, re-created Assam may be taken to have com- 

 menced about the time that our oofiee industry really 

 attracted the attention of European capitalists, about 

 1S3S. In the period between then aud now, the 

 planters of Assam have covered over 153,000 acres 

 with te.-i, while the coffee-planters of Ceylon opened 

 up fully 100,000 acres in excess of that area. As a 

 humid climate is specially suitable for tea, it is matter 

 for regret that we, iu Ceylon, did not earlier recog- 

 nize the fact that a large portion of our- island is 

 specially qualiried, by climate eminently and in many 

 places equally by soil to be a great producer of 

 tea. We- have now made the discovery, and we must 

 follow it out, tea in some cases superseding coffee on 

 cultivated land. We have the accumulated experience 

 «f our Indian neighbours to go upon, and the benefit 

 of the hardy and yet luxuriant " hybrid " which 

 their operations originated. The history of this hybrid, 

 if hybrid it re.iliy be, throws curious 1 ght on the 

 question of cinchona hybrids. Mr. Baildon's theory 

 is that the tea plant is really indigenous lo India 

 and that from India it was introduced to China and 

 Japan about 1,200 years ago. The theoi-y is supported 

 by a legend common to China and Japan, creditin'j' 

 an Indian sage named Dharma with the introdiicHon 

 of a plant which has proved so valuable to the 

 millions of Mongolians. Tliere is a story about 

 Dharna desiring to live without sleep, and tinditig 

 tea just the beverage for his purpose, which has its 

 counterpart in the story of the uofFee bu?h ; while 

 the alleged origin of tea in the scattered eyelashes 

 of the sagrt resembles the legend of the origin of 

 maize, which Longfellow has embodied iu Hmwailia. 

 The legendary lore seems to support Mr. Baildon's 

 theory that there is only one spxies of tea, the 

 Indian, and that the inferior growth and smaller leaves 

 of the China tea are the result of the plant travelling 



far from home into an uncongenial climate and un- 

 favourable conditions of soil and treatment. Mr. 

 Fortune, therefore, merely took the fai--trave!led, 

 long absent and terribly changed plant back to its par- 

 ental home, where again it united with its parents and 

 its kindred. If this theory can be sustained, then, of 

 course there is no question of hybridity, only of 

 two varieties which in the course of ages and by 

 the influence of circumstances had become quite dis- 

 tinct, coalescing and originating a third variety superi- 

 or to either. Of the superiority tlieie can be no 

 question. The indigenous Assam plant is, in its damp 

 and sha.ly native jungles, a grand plant, and the 

 threi or four estates in Assam where this kind alone 

 is grown must be a splendid sight, judging from the 

 patches of pure indigenous we have seen in Ceylon. 

 Really good " hybrid " plants, however, are more 

 certain to grow when planted out, and many ofihcm 

 quite equal the indigenous in size aud lu.vnriauce. 

 Removed from its m.tnral conditions of jungle shade 

 and moisture, the pure indigenous Assam tea plant 

 is delicate, feels the s>m and exposure, and is alto- 

 gether behind the hybrid in hardiness. The China is 

 hardy enough, and it has yielded good results in 

 Darjiling and elsewhere, but it is rapidly being super- 

 seded everywhere by the hybrid. This so-called hybrid 

 is easily propagated by .seed, "alter his kind," al- 

 though occasionally strange varieties appear. Now 

 we have no similar history of the cinchona plant 

 wandering away from its home and being absent for 

 over twelve centuries ; but the area over which the 

 plants are scattered on the Andean ranges is widespread 

 enough to admit of room for changes many and great, 

 due to conditions of soil aud climate. Originally the 

 feebler O. officinalis may have been one with the more 

 robust C. succhnbra, and what we call a hybrid may 

 be but the reunion of varieties. The analo"v of seed 

 coming true to type, however, fails largely : at least 

 so it seems. In the case of T/ua hi/bru/ci we have a 

 Thea rohusta, the larger proportion, often the whole, 

 of ihe seeds of which come true to type. This is 

 the kind of tea which is fully and firmly established 

 in Ceylon, and on which we believe the futue pro- 

 sperity of the colony, shaken by the failure of Arabian 

 coffee, so largely depends. Mr. Baildon's argument 

 for the Indian origin of the tea plant we have maiked 

 for extract, and we have indicated his theory of the 

 nature aud his estimate of the merils of the hybrid. 

 We quote the concluding pamgraph of Air. Baildon's 

 first chapter : — 



Thea Bohea Assamica went away from home, and all 

 lowed botauLsts (who had not founil his pareuts) to give 

 him the name of Cuinmsia ; but he has gone back now to the 

 old couutry, and has .agreed to remain, upon the accept- 

 ance of the equiti'ble proposition (resulting from these 

 radical times), that as he and his near relatives are getting 

 old it is useless to quarrel about the family name ; so 

 they have made a new one, of a modern cast, for their 

 progcuy, which writers on the subject designate iu English 

 instead of afflicting it with its doubtful Latin title, aud call 

 the hybrid. There is peace in the family at last, and the 

 rising generation is looked upon hopefully. 

 It is rather a naii-e idea of Baildon's that 'hybrid' is 

 English and not Latin. It "imply happens to be 

 adopted Greek. 



It just strike'' us ai singular, 'hat if an India'! sage, 



