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flourish, when other crops are perishing from drought; 

 and it is this peculiarity, perhaps, more than any 

 other, which renders tea planting in all countries 

 which, like Upper India, are subject to frequent and 

 long droughts, so safe an investment for capital. But, 

 with the experience of Assam, the dampest cl'mate 

 perhaps in the world, and the province in which pro- 

 bably more rain falls than any other in India, yet 

 which produces more abundant and more luxuriant 

 crops of tea than any district in the whole of 

 China, to assert that the tea plant is not benefitted 

 by moisture is simply rediculous. Indeed Mr. 

 Fortune has himself informed us, that ' in China, 

 rain falls in heavy and copious showers towards 

 the end of April, and that these rains continue 

 in May and June ' adding * the first gathering of 

 tea-leaves, those from which the Pekoe is made, 

 is scarcely over before the air becomes charged 

 with moisture, rain falls, and the bushes, being thus 

 placed in such favorable circumstances for vegeta- 

 ting, are soon covered again with young leaves 

 from which the main crop of the season is obtained.' 

 Tea planters in the Himalayas, then, will do well to 

 bear in mind, that though the tea plant, if planted 

 out at the proper time i. e. in the rainy season, 

 does not require irrigation, except in so far as it 

 may be necessary to supplement, in seasons of failure, 

 the supply from Heaven, the seedlings in nurseries, 

 undoubtedly do require occasional watering, and, if 



