42 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OF TEA. 



quickly as the others ; in this case it will be picked before it 

 is ready, that is, when the flush is too young, and the yield 

 will consequently be smaller. 



I believe the yield of a plantation may be largely increased 

 by attending to this. Every Tea estate should be divided 

 into gardens, of say, about 5 to 10 acres each. 1 If no 

 natural division exists, small roads to act as such should be 

 made. More than this cannot be done when the plantation 

 is first laid out, but when later the plants yield, any difference 

 between the productive powers of different parts of the same 

 garden should be noted, and these divided off into sections. 

 To do this latter with roads would take up too much space, 

 and small masonry pillars, white-washed, are the best. Four 

 of these, one at each corner of a section, are enough, and 

 they need not be more than 3 feet high and I foot square. 

 Thus each garden may, where necessary, be divided into two 

 sections, which, in a 3OO-acre estate, partitioned off into 

 thirty gardens, would give about forty to sixty sections. No 

 matter where a section may be, directly the flush on it is 

 ready it should be picked. Where the soil on any one garden 

 is much the same, and observation shows the plants all over 

 it flush equally, it may be left all in one. I only lay down 

 the principle, and I am very certain it works well, the proof 

 of which is that where I have practised it some sections during 

 the season give three, four, and five flushes more than others. 

 Had the usual plan of picking from one end to the other been 

 adopted, they would have been all forced to give the same 

 number. In other words, the said extra flushes would have 

 been lost, and further loss occasioned by some flushes being 

 taken before they were ready, others after a portion of the 

 tender leaf had hardened. 



1 A garden I have just finished in the Western Dooars is 300 acres in extent, 

 all on flat land without any breaks in the cultivation, and all divided into sections 

 of 5 acres each. Being in one large block it is not divided into gardens at all, 

 only sections. 



