10 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
In the effort to Introduce the cultivation of the tea plant and the man- 
ufacture of tea, reasonable progress has been made. In Assam, India, 
the native home of the tea plant, the English Government, recognizing 
the great importance of the subject, years since undertook the establish- 
ment of tea culture, and after many failures and at great expense has 
at last succeeded in making it a permanent and profitable industry. 
Here, with a climate and soil admirably adapted to the growth of the 
plant, and a people whose mechanical ingenuity is always equal to any 
emergency, there can be po doubt whatever of the ultimate success of © 
this industry, but it must necessarily be of slow growth. 
Under the most favorable circumstances, and with the best cultivation, 
the trees will yield but few pickings the third year after planting, and 
not until the fifth year may we look for enough leaves from the fifty 
thousand tea plants, sent out by the department this year, to commence 
in earnest the manufacture of tea for commercial purposes. During all 
this time it will be the duty of this department to watch over and en- 
courage the industry, to give a thorough chemical analysis of-the tea 
leaves at various periods of growth, and to suggest or invent simple 
methods of preparation. 
From leaves raised in the department grounds and cbtained from the 
Carolinas and Georgia, experiments have been made in the laboratory 
after the methods of the Japanese as reported by importers and other 
authorities, and with such success in some of the samples as to obtain 
the warm commendation of experts and dealers, who declared the tea 
made to be “excellent Oolong—as good as could, be bought anywhere.” 
It is well known that nature is capricious in regard to the production 
of flavors, and the place or places in which the highest-flavored and 
finest teas can be produced will only be discovered by trial, and it is the 
duty of this department to see that the trial is thoroughly made, whether 
success or failure be the result. 
The question whether our people can compete with the acquired dex- 
terity and cheap labor of Asia will be answered, when the time comes, 
by mechanical inventions that will do the work cheaper and better. 
Meanwhile nearly every family in the Middle and Southern States may 
grow their own tea, and better tea than they at present buy in the gen- 
eral markets, if they do nothing more. 
The analysis of our native grasses has been extended to thirty-nine 
species, and has already resulted in the conclusion that there exist very 
many uncultivated grasses which may fairly claim equal merit with many 
of our standard varieties. It is proposed to give in the Annual Report, 
to which this will be introductory, full analyses of the proximate constit- 
uents of these grasses and of their several ashes, and a botanical de- 
scription ef each, with a full account of their natural history, ineluding 
distribution, habit of growth, and other information, which will enable 
our farmers to select such as shall promise to be desirable additions to 
their forage plants. 
