302 On the Tea- Plantations in India. 



of any further personal information than that which we have 

 above stated. Again, Mr Bruce found tea to the south-west 

 of Gabrew ; and thus the 120 localities are reduced to five, in 

 which he has himself seen the tea-plant growing, even sup- 

 posing his experience to be such as to render his mistaking 

 some other plant for tea unlikely, which is by no means cer- 

 tain, particularly as he mentions having found on the west of 

 the Dhunseree a different species from what we use, but 

 still tea. With this amount of new information Mr Bruce 

 proves by argument, as well as the reports of natives " well 

 acquainted with the leaf, having been in the habit of drinking 

 tea,'' that large tracts of the Naga mountains are covered Avith 

 tea-plants. On information not one whit more satisfactory 

 than that on which Mr Bruce clothed large tracts of the Naga 

 mountains with tea-plants, has he covered a large portion of 

 Upper Assam with them, though we have no doubt it will be 

 found, after all, that it is confined to a few limited patches 

 here and there, in various parts of the forests, and by no means 

 universally diffused and abundant, as Mr Bruce's report would 

 lead the public to imagine. 



As a specimen of Mr Bruce's way of shewing the extent of 

 the wild tea-plants, we may epiote the following: — " In giving 

 a statement of the number of tea-tracts, when I say that 

 Tingri, or any other tract, is so long and so broad, it must be 

 understood that space to that extent only has been cleared, 

 being found to contain all the plants which grew thickly to- 

 gether ; as it was not thought worth while, at the commence- 

 ment of these experiments, to go to the expense of clearing 

 any more of the forest for the sake of a few straggling plants. 

 If these straggling plants were followed up, they would, in all 

 probability, be found becoming more numerous, until you found 

 yourself in another tract as thick and as numerous as the one 

 you left ; and if the straggling plants of this new tract were 

 traced, they would by degrees disappear until not one was seen ; 

 but if you only proceeded on through the jungle, it is ten to one 

 that you would come upon a solitary tea-plant, a little farther 

 on you would meet with another, until you gradually found 

 yourself in another new tract, as full of plants as the one you 

 had left, growing absolutely so thick as to impede each other's 



