17c FroceccUngs of the Wernerian f^ocieti/. 



By Tlionias Anderson, M D. Communicatetl l)y Di' 

 Christison.* 

 4. Dr Christison exhibited specimens from the Government 

 Superintendant of Tea Cultm-e in Assam, ilhistrating 

 the several ages at which the leaves of the Assam and 

 China Tea-plants are used for making the different com- 

 mercial varieties of black and green tea. 

 An examination of these specimens seemed to prove, tliat the leaves 

 of the China tea-plant, cultivated at the same plantation witli the 

 tea-plant of Assam, are considerably less, and somewhat thicker, hut 

 otherwise so exactly similar, that the two plants may well be mere 

 varieties of the same species, — an opinion now generally adopted by 

 botanists in India. The specimens further illustrated the doctrine 

 deduced from recent investigations in India, that the different kinds 

 of green and black tea are made from the leaves of one species of 

 plant, collected at different periods of their development. The spe- 

 cimens were collected in April 1841. The unexpanded shoots and 

 very young leaves are marked as yielding Pekoe, a black tea, and 

 Young Hyson, a green tea, by different modes of preparation. The 

 fully-expanded, but still young leaves, are stated to produce Pou- 

 chong. Souchong, and Campoi, among the black teas, and Imperial, 

 Gunpowder, and Hyson, among the green teas. Older and firmer 

 leaves produce Congo, a black tea, and Tv.'angkay and Hyson-skins, 

 two of the green teas ; and the oldest and coarsest of the leaves pro- 

 duce Bohea, the lowest in quality of the black teas. 



Froceedhigs of the V/ernerian Natural History Society. 



(Continued from vol. xxxiii. p. 198.) 



The thirty-sixth Session commenced on the 26</i November 1842, Dr 

 Robert Hamilton, V.P., in the Chair. The following office-bearers were 

 elected for the ensuing year : — 



President, 



Robert Jameson, Esq. F.R.SS.L. & E., Professor of Natural History in 



the Univcrsit}' of Edinburgh. 



* Publislicd in the piosent Number, p. 21, 



