CAMELLIA 



THEA 



History 



THE TEA PLANT 



First Mention 

 of Tea-drinking 

 in India. 



Duty on Tea. 



First 



Botanical 



Specimen. 



he adds, take great pride in the teapots which they use in giving a friendly cup. 

 Tulpius (Observ. Medicce, 1641) extols the merits of tea as a medicine. It is 

 somewhat significant that Garcia de Orta makes no mention of tea as one of 

 the commodities brought from China and Japan to India. Linschoten ( Voy. 

 E. Ind., 1598 (ed. Hakl. Soc.), 1885, i., 157), who usually compiles from Garcia, 

 practically repeats Maffeius's account of tea-drinking in Japan. Trigantius (De 

 Christ. Exp. in Sinas, 1616, i., 689) speaks of the hot-tea drink of the Chinese. 

 Casper Bauhin (Pinax, Theat. Bot., 1623, 147) was apparently the first scientific 

 or botanical writer who makes mention of what would appear to have been tea. 

 But the passage in question does not occur in his earlier work (the Phytopinax, 

 1596). He calls it chaa and describes it as his seventh variety of Fceniculum 

 (Fennel) ! Absurd though this may seem there would appear to be no occasion 

 to doubt that he is speaking of tea. Bontius, a Dutch physician resident in 

 Batavia (Hist. Nat. et Med. Ind. Or., 1631, in Piso, Ind. Utri. re Nat. et Med., 

 1658, 87) tells us that his friend General Spex had removed all doubt as to the 

 nature of the tea plant, since he had studied its cultivation in Japan. Bontius 

 then goes on to say that the finer qualities of the decoction are often so bitter 

 that sugar has to be added to make it palatable, and he compares the beverage 

 to the " cave " (coffee) of the Muhammadans (see p. 364). He then urges 

 that the difference between black and green tea is only in the method of prepara- 

 tion a fact that took Europe nearly two centuries to accept. In Piso there is an 

 excellent engraving of cnmeiiin i7i- (the Chinese form) drawn from nature in 

 Japan by D. Caron, and presented to Piso; Caron went to Japan in 1638 under the 

 Dutch E.I. Company. [Bretschneider, Hist. Europ. Bot. Disc, in China, 1898, 25.} 

 Albert de Mandelslo (Travels, in Olearius, Hist. Muscovy, etc., 1662, 15, 18) says, 

 " At our ordinary meetings every day we took onely The, which is commonly used 

 all over the Indies, not onely among those of the Country but also among the 

 Dutch and English, who take it as a drug. The Persians instead of The drink 

 their Kahwa." This same statement occurs in Ovington's Voyage to Suratt 

 (1689, 305-9, 427). It is curious, however, that in the Ain-i-Akbari, 1590, 

 no mention is made of tea. It was conveyed to Europe by the Dutch East 

 India Company, and from Holland was carried to England by Lord Arlington 

 and others. In 1660 tea-drinking had become so general that it was taxed 

 along with coffee, chocolate, etc., and sold at the coffee-houses. The English 

 East India Company soon gave attention to it. In 1664 they made a present 

 of some tea to King Charles II., and in 1677 the Company had taken 

 steps to secure a regular supply. At this time tea sold in London at 5 

 to 10 a pound. A few years later (1689) a direct duty on imports (which 

 amounted to 5. a pound) was imposed. It is further noteworthy that at 

 that time the East India Company drew its supplies for Europe via. Madras 

 and Surat and not direct from China. This circumstance would thus give 

 an air of plausibility to the statement made by Mandelslo that tea was 

 drunk in India about the same time, if not before, the habit had been origi- 

 nated in England. Evelyn (Mem., 1690, ii., 20) speaks of having examined 

 a specimen of the " roote of thea which was so perplexed large and intricate 

 that it was wonderful to consider." Petiver (Op. Hist. Nat., 1767, i., t. 21) 

 shows a chair made of the roots of the tea plant which was presented by the 

 " New East India Company " to Lord Somers. Curiously enough, one of the 

 earliest and at the same time most instructive botanical specimens of the tea 

 plant extant is in the Sloane Herbarium of the British Museum (Ixxxi., 

 f. 48). It belongs to a series of specimens said to have been collected 

 in Malabar, between 1698 and 1702, by Samuel Browne and Edward Bulkley. 

 Browne was a surgeon in the service of the East India Company, and died some 

 time prior to 1703. He was succeeded by Bulkley. Both of these officers made 

 extensive botanical collections, which were sent for the most part to James 

 Petiver. It is just possible that long prior to the discovery of the indigenous 

 tea plant in India or to the importations from China of seeds and plants accom- 

 plished by Gordon and Fortune (presently to be described), the tea plant had 

 actually been conveyed to India and cultivated experimentally somewhere on 

 the Malabar coast. But what is most curious of all is that the plant so 

 grown was not Cnmeiiin Then, Link oar. itohen (the plant presently being 

 cultivated most frequently in the plantations of South India), but oar, viritii*, 

 and was thus very similar to the so-called "Assam Indigenous." It is, moreover, 

 just possible that upon this very specimen was based the name Then rir/rf**. 

 as given by Hill and adopted subsequently by Linnaeus. In fact Linnaeus pos- 



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