— 223 — 



a genuine tea plant, but the allied Camellia confusa Craib is hère used 

 for preparing „inieng." Shoiild future research décide in favour of the 

 latter hypothesis, of course this would make the case of Hai-nan worthless 

 for our problem. But even if not so, the présence of wiid tea on this 

 island shouid by no means convey the idea shat Hai-nan is the „nalive 



country" of tea ! 



This last argument of course holds good for ail cases of wild-growing 

 tea. Briefly sunimarising, we may say that a great number of such localities 

 mentioned in literature, were found un 1er what we might call: „Siian 

 conditions", viz., tea plants apparently not cultivated but nevertheless 

 arranged in rather regular patches, their type is upon the whole uniform, 

 and the natives use it in a quite singular way. in othcr words, human 

 and botanic relationship are distributed parallelly. Thèse conditions are to 

 be found in Upper Assaui '), Burma, Siam, perhaps in French indochina 

 and in Hai-nan. Absolutely wild, unemployed by aborigines, are Henry's 

 Chinese tea plant of Meng-tze (Yun-nan) together with its relatives in 

 Upper Tong-king, and the large-leaved variety of Manipur. As for von 

 Rosthorn's „wild" tea from Sze-chuan, 1 think we had better discard 

 this very doubtful case. 



And now we will attempt to décide whether the localities cited above 

 are likely to coïncide with the ,,original home" of the tea plant, in doing 

 so, we will for the présent set aside the certainly fundamental question 

 how in this assumed „home" the tea plant itself originated, and only 

 inquire whether geographical distribution accounts for its diversity of forms, 

 that is, whether ail varieties may be traced to one „parent form", and where 

 this parent may hâve originated. 



It is obvious that Alphonsf De Candolle ') meant the „origin" in the 

 latter sensé, when he, in the vague style of his time, coiicluded: ..Ainsi le 

 ,,Thé doit être indigène dans les pays montueux qui séparent les plaines de 

 „rinde de celles de la Chine." Henry had not yet found his wild plant 

 then, so De Candolle based his inference wholly on the Assam discovery: 

 this country possessed an indigenous plant, the cultivated varieties occur- 

 red in eastern China, so the parent form probably ought to hâve existed 

 somewhere between both, that is as plain as a pike-staff! But this localisa- 

 tion lacks definiteness in our modem eyes, and we object to the assump- 

 tion, tacitly understood by Darwinistic writers, that Chinese and Assamese 

 tea shouid necessarily hâve been evolved from a common parent form. 

 Moreover, most energetically we oppose ourselves against any attempt to 

 dérive the China plant from the Assam indigenous. merely because the 

 former is a so-called ,,cultural variety' of the latter? 



In spite of thèse objections to De Candolle's hypothesis, we may 

 to a certain extent make use of it as an introduction to our problem. It is, 

 indeed, undeniable that Ihere apparently exists some relation between the 

 oro-hydrographical System of south-eastern Asia and the situation of the 



') We will discuss this point below. 

 2) Alph. De Candolle 1883, p. 95. 



