12 EARLY HISTORY. 



discoveries. Thus, also, considerable allowances are to 

 be deducted from the scientific discoveries of Chin-Nung 

 in botany, when we read of his having, in one day, dis- 

 covered no less than seventy different species of plants 

 that were poisonous and seventy others that were anti- 

 dotes against their baneful effects. 



According to some Chinese authorities, the Tea plant 

 was first introduced into their country from Corea as late 

 as the fourth century of the present era, from whence it is 

 said to have been carried to Japan in the ninth. Others 

 again maintaining that it is undoubtedly indigenous to 

 China, being originally discovered on the hills of those 

 provinces, where it now grows so abundantly, no date, 

 however, being named. While the Japanese, to whom 

 the plant is as valuable as it is to the Chinese, state that 

 both countries obtained it simultaneously from Corea, 

 about A. D. 828. This latter claim not being sustained 

 by any proof whatever Von Siebold, to the contrary 

 who, relying on the statements of certain Japanese writers 

 to this effect, argues in support of their assertions, the 

 improbability of which is unconsciously admitted by Von 

 Siebold himself when he observes " that in the southern 

 provinces of Japan the tea plant is abundant on the 

 plains, but as the traveler advances towards the moun- 

 tains it disappears," hence inferring that it is an exotic. 

 The converse of this theory holding good of China, a 

 like inference tends to but confirm their claim that with 

 them the plant is indigenous. That the Japanese did 

 not originally obtain the plant from Corea but from 

 China is abundantly proven by the Japanese themselves, 

 many of whom admit that it was first introduced to 

 their country from China about the middle of the 

 ninth century. In support of this acknowledgment it 

 is interesting to note, as confirming the Chinese origin 



