150 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



period of flowering, wliich is about a month sooner than bohea. However 

 this may be, it appears to be certain that these two plants furnish all the 

 kinds of the tea of commerce, and that the mode of preparing the leaves, 

 or their age, make ail the difference between the black and the green. 

 The tea which comes to us from China by way of Russia, known by the 

 name of caravan tea, has the reputation of being very superior to that 

 which comes by sea. In the European trade we know only a very limited 

 number of kinds, but it appears that the Chinese count above thirty-six 

 kinds of tea. 



The use of tea in Cliina goes back to the remotest antiquity, even to 

 mythic times. Tradition says that a holy man, by prayer, night and day, 

 and by example, improved the morals of the Chinese, that on one night, 

 overcome by fatigue, he vainly tried to keep awake, and being unable to 

 keep his eyes open, he cut off their eye-lids, and where they fell on the 

 ground the tea plant came, whose infusion keeps the eyes open! The 

 Dutch first brought tea to Europe in the seventeenth century. 



SELF-PROPAGxVTION OF TURNIPS. 



Solon Robinson read a letter from John Willet, Niles, Mich., which 

 states that he sowed a piece of land with turnips and timothy in 1840. 

 He mowed the land seven years and pastured it three more, and plowed 

 and sowed it to wheat, small turnips having grown and seeded among the 

 grass every year, and larger ones with the wheat. The ground, which was 

 a black loam, heavily timbered when cleared in 1840, was planted with 

 corn in 1853, among which many turnips grew, mostly hot, peppery and 

 tou<i;li, but some good, and six inches in diameter. Since that year, corn 

 and wheat alternately have been grown, and every year turnips from the 

 original seeding in 1840. No turnips have been grown within eighty rods 

 of the ground, so that the fact of self-propagation is well proved. The 

 land is at present in pasture, but Mr. Willet thinks it would produce tur- 

 nips again next year if planted to corn. 



PERPETUAL RASPBERRIES. 



Chas. F. Erhard, of Ravenswood, exhibited some branches of Raspber- 

 ries with flowers, half-grown berries and ripe fruit. The only thing to be 

 said in favor of these ever-bearing raspberries is, that they produce fruit a 

 long time. It is not excellent. 



Andrew S. Fuller, horticulturist, Brooklyn, said he had the Brinkley 

 orange raspberry, still in bearing. He ascribes their ever-bearing to liquid 

 manure, fresh from the cow stable. 



CHESS. 



R. G. Pardee. — I have a letter from a farmer friend of mine, Ebenezer 

 Manson, of Seneca county, who says: 



"I always read with deep interest and profit the proceedings of the 

 Farmers' Club. I have a question, viz : Is there any connection between 



