140 Mr Bruce on the Manufacture of Tea, and on the 



size, you may gather a small crop of tea from them the next 

 year. As these plants are very slender, it would be best to 

 plant four or five close together to form a fine bush. If the 

 plants ai'e raised from seed, you may expect a small crop of 

 tea the third year, but they do not come to maturity under 

 six years. It is said they live to the age of forty or fifty years. 

 The Chinese way of digging a hole, and putting in a handful 

 or two of seed, does not succeed so well in this country, as 

 putting two or three seeds on small ridges of earth, and cover- 

 ing them over, which I have found to answer better. 



In clearing a new tea-tract, if the jungle trees are very 

 large and numerous, it would be as well to make a clean 

 sweep of the whole, by cutting them and the tea-plants all 

 down together ; for it would be impossible to get rid of so 

 much wood without the help of fire. The tea-plants, if al- 

 lowed to remain, would be of little use after they had been 

 crushed and broken by the fall of the large trees, and dried 

 up by the fire ; but admitting that they could escape all this, 

 the leaves of trees from twelve to twenty feet high could not 

 be reached, and, if they could, they would be almost useless 

 for tea-manufacture, as it is the young leaves from young 

 trees that produce the best teas. But if all were cut down 

 and set fire to, we should have a fine clear tract at once, at 

 the least expense, and might expect to have a pretty good 

 crop of tea one year after the cutting, or at furthest, the se- 

 cond year ; for it is astonishing with what vigour the plant 

 shoots up after the fire has been applied. And we gain by 

 this process ; for, from every old stock or stump cut down, 

 ten or twelve more A-igorous shoots spring up, so that, in the 

 place of a single plant, you have now a fine tea-bush. I think, 

 from what I have seen of these plants, that, if cut down every 

 third year, they would yield far superior teas ; neither am I 

 singular in this opinion, the green tea Chinamen having told 

 me that they cut down their plants every ninth year, which 

 may be reckoned equivalent to our third year, taking into con- 

 sideration the size of our trees and the richness of our soil. 

 Our trees, or plants, are certainly more than foiu- or five times 

 the size of theirs, and must consequently yield so many times 

 more produce : theirs is the dwarf, ours the giant tea. The 



