15 



3ti the subject until they should be in possession of 

 the fruit, which they considered the only test they 

 could safely take as a guide. Now eight years is a 

 very long time to allow for a suspension of judge- 

 ment regarding the species of a plant so long known 

 :o the commercial world as the tea plant. Had the 

 Tea Committee, with the knowledge they con- 

 fess to have been so long in possession of, either 

 individually before, or collectively after their 

 ippoinment, taken any active measures to satisfy 

 shemselves on the point which they imply in their 

 report was in question, they might have been admit- 

 :ed to some share in the merit of this discovery. 

 But there is nothing to show that they did so, or 

 shat they were not quite as much taken by sur- 

 prize as every one else in India. On the contrary 

 ;heir proceedings, both before and after the dis- 

 covery, negative, any such conclusion. For, there 

 tvas no difference between the circulars sent by 

 ;hem to Assam and any other part of India, and 

 m receipt of the intelligence of the new discovery, ' 

 ;hey completely altered the plan of operations they 

 iad previously sketched out. 



Mr. Gordon was now recalled from China, and a 

 Commission of scientific men, composed of Doctors 

 Wallich and Griffith as botanists, and Doctor 

 Me Olelbmd as a geologist, was deputed to Upper 

 Assam, for the purpose of collecting, on the spot, 

 ihe greatest variety procurable of botanical, geo- 



