PREFACE 



TO 



THE FIRST EDITION, 



THE following Essay was written with, firstly, the object of 

 competing for the Gold Medal and the Money Prize offered 

 by the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India for 

 the best treatise on the cultivation and manufacture of Tea ; 

 and, secondly, with the view of arranging the hundreds of 

 notes on these subjects, which, in the course of eleven years, 

 I had collected. 



During all these years I have been a Tea planter, making 

 first for myself and others a garden in the Himalayas, and 

 for the last six years doing the same thing for myself in the 

 Chittagong district. 



Whenever I have visited other plantations (and I have 

 seen a great number in many districts), I have brought away 

 notes of all I saw. Up to the last, at every such visit, I have 

 learnt something if rarely nothing to follow, something at 

 least to avoid. I have now tested all and everything con- 

 nected with the cultivation and manufacture of Tea by my 



