Clifton College Scientific Society. 35 



France has also procured some plants. There can be hardly 

 any doubt but that the tea-plant would succeed in many countries 

 of Europe if proper care were paid to its cultivation, till it became 

 inured to the climate. A soil mixed with pieces of granite has 

 been thought especially to suit it. 



■ In Assam, tea was discovered in 1823, while the country was 

 part of the Burmese dominions, by Mr Eobert Bruce, who had 

 proceeded thither on a mercantile speculation. The war M'ith the 

 British breaking out shortly after, and a brother of the first dis- 

 coverer happening to be appointed to the command of a division 

 of gun-boats employed in some part of the operations, he followed 

 up the pursuit of the subject, and obtained several hundred plants 

 and a considerable quantity of seed. 



In 1834, Lord W. Bentinck appointed a committee to report 

 as to the best method of cultivating tea in India. This committee 

 recommended that the attempt first be made on the lower hills 

 and valleys of the Himalayan range. Next to them, it was added, 

 ' those of our eastern frontiers offer the best prospects, and after 

 them, the Neilgherry and other lofty mountains in Southern and 

 Central India.' The extremes of temperature are somewhat less 

 here than in China. Tea is now cultivated in Assam with great 

 success. 



Tea must have been used in China from very early times. The 

 plant, indeed, has not yet been found there in a wUd state, though 

 when the interior is explored by botanists it is most probable that 

 it will. The tea-plant has only been found wild in Upper 

 Assam. 



A Japanese tradition, however, which ascribes its introduction 

 to China to an Indian Buddhist priest who visited that country 

 in the sixth century, favours the supposition of its Indian 

 origin. 



Another tradition speaks of it as early as the third century. The 

 legend runs, ' that a pious hermit, who in his watchings and 

 prayers had often been overtaken by sleep, so that his eyelids 

 closed, in holy wrath against the weakness of the flesh, cut them 

 off, and threw them on the ground. But a god caused a tea-shrub 

 to spring out of them, the leaves of which exhibit the form of an 

 eyelid bordered with lashes, and possess the gift of hindering 

 sleep.' 



A somewhat similar story is related concerning the introduc- 

 tion of coffee into Arabia. 



Though now so extensively employed, the introduction of tea 

 into Europe is of comparatively recent origin. Macpherson in 

 his ' History of European Commerce with India,' states that tea 

 {sah) is mentioned as the usual beverage of the Chinese by Soli- 



