Black Tea^ and its first Introduction. 507 



qualities, but only two species, viz. Thea viridis (green tea), 

 and Thea Bohea,* and even these two liav^e such few points of 

 difference, that quite lately they were described by Fortune 

 as one and the same species. Thus, too, it has been asserted 

 in our own day that the green and black varieties of tea sold 

 in Europe do not, as is universally supposed, belong to two 

 different species of tea, but that the difference of colour, shape 

 of leaf, flavour, &c., is exclusively due to varieties in the 

 mode of preparing them for the market, and that the manu- 

 facturer is able to make from the leaves every description, 

 black or green, which is required in commerce. Thus in the 

 celebrated tea district of Ning-tschan, where in former days 

 black tea was exclusively grown, there is now procured green 

 tea from the same species of plant, apparently because its 

 cultivation pays better, while the quality remains in its 

 olden repute. 



The black tea, which constitutes four-fifths of the entire 

 export to England, is grown of a particularly fine quality in 

 the district of Kien-ning-foo in the province of Fo-kien, and 

 is known to commerce by a variety of names, chiefly derived 

 froTQ the localities in which it is gi'own, or those of their pro- 

 prietors. On the other hand, the green sort selected for 



* The first scientific arrangement of the tea plant according to dried specimens was 

 made in 1753 by LinTueus, who in his Sj}ecies Plantarum included among these one 

 species, which he called Thea Sinensis. But by the time the second edition of his 

 renowned work made its appearance in 1762, Linnaeus found himself compelled to 

 make two species of it, and to assign them the names by which they are known to 

 the present day. The first living tea plant was brought to Europe in October, 1763, 

 by a ship-captain named Ekeberg, and planted in the Botanic Garden of Upsala. 



