ESSENTIAL 



Selection of 

 Localities. 



CAMELLIA 



THE A 



Cultivation 



MIO.IS a.lopte.l ha\e li.-en i-oiit i nuallv improved. So far as the plants continooiu 



!, the methods of pruning, of plucking, of cultivation in ^P"" "* *- 

 general, have constantly been ameliorated, and the improvement is still 

 in. The result is shown in the increase of crop ; in 1873 the crop 

 11 was roughly from _'"><! to 280 Ib. per acre, and in 1904-5, in 



-* iliet and tli- I 'uars. it r.intr'd between 450 and 500 Ib. Improred 



and, as a rule, the leaf plucked was finer and more capable J,!^^ 

 ood tea than at the earlier date. The manufacture of Quality. 

 leal lus undergone a total revolution; the rolling by hand, as also 

 dm HIT or firing over charcoal (and the attendant evils and risks of 

 e met ho. Is) have been .entirely abandoned. Since the introduction of 

 eble efforts at manufacture by machinery in the early 'sixties, 

 liv stage the older methods have disappeared, and now the work in a 

 factory is or can be made, in a very large measure, an automatic process, 

 uinot be afforded to trace the development of tea culture 

 Manufacture in India from the earliest to the latest stages, interesting 

 : i such a story would be : all that can be attempted here is to state 

 t approved conditions for the culture of the tea plant, to describe 

 methods adopted in planting and maintaining an estate, and to give 

 .e account of the principles of manufacture at present in vogue. 

 Localities and Climates. The most suitable localities for the 

 ure of tea have been, from the beginning, a source of fruitful dis- 

 ion. Already in 1836, of the men best qualified to judge, some 

 intained that the North- West Himalaya with a temperate climate and 

 ional frost would be found the ideal situation : others, that Assam, 

 re the plant had been found apparently indigenous, possessed con- 

 very similar to those of the best tea districts of China : while the 

 ble climate of the Nilgiris was also recommended. Truth to tell, 

 e were elements of vantage in all these localities. The ideal tea 

 ate, however, is probably that of Upper Assam, and perhaps of Cachar 

 ose districts, in fact, where the apparently indigenous tea had been 

 Covered. The hilly colder districts of Darjeeling, Kumaon, the Nil- 

 is and of the Kangra Valley have produced very successful plantations, 

 in all these the crop per acre is very considerably smaller than that 

 Upper Assam, though this smallness of crop is often (though not always) 

 pensated for by an increase in quality in the tea. On the other hand, 

 satisfactory results have been achieved in the hotter and drier 

 ' ttricts of Lower Assam, of Sylhet, and in a less measure of Chittagong ; 

 here the tea produced has always been inferior in character. Tea 

 uires, in fact, neither a tropical nor a temperate climate, but a sub- 

 ical one, with a fairly moist atmosphere throughout at least the 

 ter part of the year. In point of temperature the best growth is Temperature. 

 uced with a daily variation of temperature, say, from 75 to 85 F. 

 it goes far above the latter point, damage results, unless the high 

 perature is accompanied by very moist conditions : the highest shade 

 perature usually reached in Upper Assam is from 95 F. to 98 F., 

 this always during the rainy season. Only very slow growth, on 

 other hand, takes place much below 70 F., and though plucking 

 ti nues in many districts when the daily maximum does not reach this 

 point, yet the intervals between the crops of leaf become very long. 

 During part of the year, almost all over the Indian tea area, no plucking 

 is attempted, and then the temperature may go down almost to freezing 



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