68 TEMPERATURE OF AMERICA AND CHINA. 



and, like the Chinese, dried them, in which state we could 

 find no market. 



TEMPERATURE. 



Tea will not bear great excess of temperature. It 

 would live in the open air in England or Ireland, if it 

 had time to take root. There is a large plant in Kew 

 Gardens exposed, but I believe they give it some kind of 

 protection in the cold season. I am of opinion that, with 

 perseverance, tea might grow in Ireland, as fancy hedges, 

 by a great deal of care being taken the first year. But 

 these pots in which all plants, at least all exotics, are con- 

 demned to linger out a few years of a miserable, stunted 

 existence, are the bane of all success. Look at a tea 

 plant, with its length of root, in an eight or nine inch pot ! 



There is no country subject to greater extremes of 

 temperature than China. In the month of April, even 

 as low as 31 deg. of N. lat., the. cotton and other 

 annual plants are frequently destroyed by frost ; and in 

 the 29th deg. of N. lat., the tea plants are obliged to be 

 covered over with rice straw, and bound with ropes, to 

 protect them from frost and snow. Mr. Fortune says he 

 saw the thermometer stand as high as 100 degs., in the 

 shade, at Shanghae, and that it invariably fell to 12 degs., 

 Farenheit, in winter. 



It is, in a great measure, the great difference in the 

 altitudes of China, that causes so great varieties in its 

 climates. Fogan, which is in 27 degs. 4 min. N. lat., is 

 mild throughout, as the following will show : 



Fogan, - Mean of the four hottest months, 82 

 " - Annual mean, ... - 67 



