— 224 ~ 



centres of tea cultivation. From a look at the map we shall be struck by 

 the fact that ail the tea districts are grouped along several large rivers, 

 namely: the Yang-tse-kiang, the Hsi-kiang, the Song-koi or Red River, the 

 Me-khong, the Salwin, the Irawaddy and the Brahmaputra. Ail thèse rivers. 

 or at least some of their tributaries. spring from one and the same moun- 

 îain-range, which on the map is at once conspicuous by its peculiar deep 

 valleys stretching from the North to the South, and which séparâtes Sze- 

 chuen from Tibet. Von Richthofen has denoted it with the name „vor- 

 tibetisches Gebirge" ') This Antc-Tibetan mountain-range seemingly represents 

 a distribution centre of tea and its allies. Is it possible that the parent 

 form, or several forms of the tea plant, hâve been transporîed from hère in 

 différent directions? Thus we might render the meaning of the hypothesis of 

 De Candolle in a modernized version, and it is this we are now going to test. 



We must begin with a distinction that De Candolle has also failed 

 to make. Was it a wild tea plant that was distributed from the Ante- 

 Tibetan mountainS; or was it the cultivated plant? The former line of argu- 

 ment is based upon the self-evident fact that tea once was a wild plant, 

 and then yet subject to the laws of phytogeoraphy, without having been 

 disturbed by human interférence; has it, thus, been distributed in a wild 

 State? In this case, every spot where tea grows at présent, indicates the 

 course taken by the plant in early times. But it stands to reason that man 

 actually has disturbed the original state of things. Therefore, the second 

 line of argument makes allowance for the fact that the tea plant has been 

 cultivated for thousands of years. and is thus subject to the history of 

 human displacement, especially to the commercial history of Central Asia; 

 therefore, we can put the question: was it an économie plant that was 

 conveyed from the Ante-Tibetan range to the surrounding countries? It 

 cannot hâve been the only means of transport, because man was not al- 

 ways a farmer, and wild plants are transported without his aid. We shall 

 hâve to combine both views. 



As to the probability that the wild plant should hâve spread in a 

 centrifugal direction, we can test it by referring to some phytogeograph'cal 

 conclusions, drawn by florists from the sludy of Central Asia, however 

 scanty our knowledge of fhis flora is as yet. 



An authorily such as Prain 2) has deduced from his investigation of the 

 Kachin flora, Ihat the région of the Mishmi and Kachin mountains, siluated 

 between the upper Brahmaputra and the Salwin, shows an affinity to the 

 West (especially to Assam) thit is very much greater than to the East 

 (China). He figures those degrees of affinity in percentages, thus: 



to Arracan-Assam 40 "/o 



,, Himalaya 22 % 



,, Eastern Indochina 27 % 



„ China 11 %. 



'). F. Von Richthofen 1912, p. 13.- In vol. li (1882, p. 28) he called it„Osttibetisches 

 Hochgebirgsland"; this should continue to the South as „Hinterindisches Faltungs- 

 system". 



2) E. POTTINGER, D. PRAIN 1898, p. 284. 



