134 



FOREIGN NOTICES. 



I noticed, however, a few days since, three 

 specimens of March Bergamot on my tree> 

 and at Mr. Walker's, about a dozen Jo- 

 sephine de Malines, from scions which he 

 had of me only two years since. This 



would indicate an early bearer; but I 

 have several strong trees, which are quite 

 reluctant to set fruit buds. 



Yours, M. P. W. 



Boston, Aug.U, 1819. 



FOREIGN NOTICES. 



British Tea Culture. — The relation between 

 vegetaiion and climate is a much more important 

 horticultural consideration than many imagine. 

 We learn from its study not only why the grapes 

 of Fontainebleau and the Clinkstone peaches of 

 Italy cannot he obtained in England, but also 

 that with such means as gardeners at present 

 command there is no possibility of obtaining them. 

 Cuttings may be brought, trees may be imported, 

 the stocks on which they are grafted may be va- 

 ried, hut the result will still be unsatisfactory. 

 The climate of Great Britain is not that of Paris 

 or Naples. If this were more generally borne in 

 mind, gardeners would escape the blame imputed 

 to them by unreasonable persons, for not perform- 

 ing physical impossibilities. 



But if the attentive study of this important and 

 most interesting subject teaches us to know what 

 is impossible, it also guides us in determining what 

 may with certainty be accomplished. It would 

 have taught the speculators in Assam tea to dis- 

 trust the issue of their enterprise, as it, on the 

 contrary, inspired the scientific advisers of the 

 East India Company with most entire confidence 

 in the success to be anticipated from cultivating 

 tea in some of the northern provinces under British 

 rule. 



The introduction of the cultivation of tea into 

 the Himalaya is one of the most important events 

 in the social history of British India. Indepen- 

 dently of the commercial advantages that must 

 result from it, the preparation of the leaves will 

 of itself afford profitable employment to a peasant- 

 ry sunk in the lowest and most helpless poverty, 

 not from their own lazy habits, but from the total 

 absence of all remunerating occupations. Dr. 

 Hooker giyes the following example of the condi- 

 tion of the peasantry in the north of India. A 

 youth had been eaten by an alligator, and this is 

 the state of his parents: 



" The poor woman earns a scanty maintenance 

 by making catechu. She inhabits a little cottage, 

 and has no property but two bhiles (oxen,) to 

 bring wood from the hills, and a very few house- 

 hold chattels; and how few these are is known 

 only to persons who have seen the meagre furni- 

 ture of Dangha hovels. Her husband cuts the 

 trees in the forest, and drags them to the hut; 



but he is now sick; and her only son, her future 

 stay, was he whose end I have just related. Her 

 daily food is rice, with beans from the beautiful 

 blue flowered Dolichos, trailing round the cottage; 

 and she is in debt to the contractor, who has ad- 

 vanced her two rupees (about 4s.) to be worked 

 off in three months, by the preparation of 240 lbs. 

 of catechu. Rent to the Rajah, tax to the police, 

 and rates to the Brahminee priest, are all paid 

 from an acre of land, yielding so wretched a crop 

 of barley, that it more resembled a fal'ow field 

 than a harvest field. All day long she is boiling 

 down the catechu wood, cut into chips, and pour- 

 ing the decoction into large wooden troughs, 

 where it is inspissated. This Zillah is famous for 

 the quantity of catechu its dry forests yield. The 

 plant is a little thorny tree, erect, and spreading 

 a rounded coma of well-remembered prickly branch- 

 es. Its wood is yellow, with a dark brick-red 

 heart : it is most productive in January, and use- 

 less in June." 



To provide employment for people like these is 

 the first duty of a civilised government, and was 

 no doubt the cause of Lord Hardinge's earnest 

 advice to the Court of Directors that the tea plan- 

 tations should be aided by the whole power of the 

 Indian Government. 



A highly interesting account of the " progress 

 of the culture of the China Tea Plant in the Hima- 

 layas, from 1835 to 1847," has been given by Dr. 

 Royle, to whose judicious counsels its establish- 

 ment there has been mainly owing. The following 

 facts, which we borrow from his pages, will ex- 

 plain briefly the history of the experiment, and the 

 highly satisfactory results which have attended it: 



'■ It was in the early part of the year 1827 that 

 I first mentioned to the Earl Amherst, then Go- 

 vernor-General of India, the probability of a suc- 

 cessful cultivation of tea in the Himalayan moun- 

 tains, and included it specifically in a report which 

 was presented to the Indian Government at the 

 latter end of that year, stating that ' It does not 

 appear by any means so delicate, or so limited in 

 geographical distribution, as is generally supposed, 

 and although it appears to attain the greatest per- 

 fection in the mild climate about Nankin, yet it 

 flourishes in the northern latitudes of Pekin and of 

 Japan.' On Lord William Bentinck visiting the 



