THE TEA PLANT 



Appointment of 

 a 1 Commission. 



Black and 

 Green Teas. 



CAMELLIA 



THEA 



Early Endeavours 



Scott's discoveries received the attention they deserved, Gordon very 

 possibly would never have been sent to China. As it was, Wallich 

 refused to believe that even Jenkins's plant was the true tea plant until he 

 had a sample of tea made from it and sent to him. In due time a Com- 

 mission was appointed to visit Assam in order to report on the discovery 

 of Indian indigenous tea. It consisted of Drs. Wallich, Griffith and Mc- 

 Clelland. They could not agree as to the plant, but for the purpose of 

 the Government experiments recommended that the Himalaya should 

 be first tried, then Assam, and lastly the mountains of South India. 

 They then added that " the China plant and not the degraded Assam 

 plant " should be experimented with. The controversy about black and 

 green tea and of the separate plants from which these were supposed 

 to be made was doubtless the will-o'-the-wisp that largely influenced 

 Wallich to lay down the dictum that the Indian plant was a Camellia 

 and not a Thea a distinction, as has been shown, without a difference, 

 and one which greatly retarded the Indian tea industry. Unfortu- 

 nately for Wallich his so-called Camellia has since proved very much 

 more valuable than the Tltea, the merits of which he extolled and which 

 alone, in his opinion, should have been cultivated. It may be here added 

 that it is remarkable, when so much difference of opinion prevailed and the 

 existence of wild tea in Assam had even been challenged, that no one thought 

 of drawing attention to the specimen of the tea plant from Malabar 

 preserved in the Sloane Herbarium. Had this been done, we should in all 

 probability have been told the history of that sample more definitely than 

 we are ever likely now to learn, and at the same time a fuller conception 

 of the Chinese tea plant would have been obtained than possessed by 

 Wallich and others, who denied that the Assam stock was the true tea- 

 yielding species. 



Wallich, Royle and Falconer (Journ. As. Soc., Beng., 1834, iii., 178-88) 

 upheld the Himalaya as the preferable locality, while Griffith and Mc- 

 Clelland urged the claims of Assam, which they regarded as the indigenous 

 habitat of the plant. In guarded yet unmistakable language Griffith gave 

 his opinions, even though these were inimical to the views of his superior 

 and colleague, Dr. Wallich. Gordon was in consequence re-deputed to 

 China, and on his return to India with a supply of plants, seeds, etc., he 

 resigned his connection with the Commission without having written an 

 account of his journeys in China. A third mission to China (the expenses 

 of which were partly borne by the Royal Horticultural Society of England) 

 was organised and successfully conducted by Mr. R. Fortune, who wrote 

 in consequence, Three Years'' Wanderings in China (1847), Tea Districts of 

 China (1852). and A Residence Among the Chinese (1857). These works 

 contain full particulars of his studies of the Chinese industry, as also 

 details regarding the plants, seeds, etc., conveyed by him to India. 



Continuing this brief sketch, it may be added that in India itself a number 

 of books and reports on tea appeared in rapid succession, from about the date of 

 the Tea Commission's report. [Cf. Griffith, JRept. of Tea Plant in Upper Assam, 

 1835 ; C. A. Bruce, Rept. Manuf. Tea and Tea Plantat. in Assam, in Edirib. New 

 Phil. Journ., 1840, xxviii., 120-61 ; also Ace. Manuf. Black Tea, 1838; Robinson, 

 Assam, 1841, 127-8 ; Charleton, Corresp. regard. Disc. Tea in Assam, 1841 ; Royle, 

 Tea in HimaL, Prod. Res. Ind., 1840, 257-311 ; Jameson, Tea in Kangra, 1853 ; 

 also Rept. Govt. Tea Plantat.. in Journ. Agri.-Hort. Soc. Ind., vi., 81 ; Wingrove, 

 Assam Tea, 1870; Cochran, Ind. Tea, 1872 ; Campbell. Profit. Cult. Tea, in Journ. 

 Soc. Arts, 1872; Money, Cult, and Manuf. of Tea (1st ed.). 1874; Claud Bald, Ind. 

 Tea, its Cult, and Manuf., 1903 ; Bamber, Chem. andAgri. of Tea, 1893 ; also Kept. 



216 



Different 

 Opinions as 

 to Location. 



Missions 

 to China. 



