32 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



production of tea, stating that "there is nothing improb- 

 able in a plant that is so widely diffused from north to 

 south being grown there." Tea of average quality being 

 now shipped from Natal to the London market. 



Besides Java, India and Ceylon, where tea culture has 

 been introduced and profitably demonstrated, numerous 

 attempts have and are being made to colonize the plant 

 in other countries than these of the East, but beyond the 

 countries above enumerated, the industry has so far never 

 taken root, for while the cultivated varieties of the tea- 

 plant are comparatively hardy, possessing an adaptability 

 to climate excelled alone among plants only by that 

 of wheat, the limits of actual tea cultivation extend from 

 the 39th degree of north latitude in Japan, through the 

 tropics to Java, Ceylon, India and China, and while it 

 will live in the open air in many of the countries into 

 which it has been introduced and withstand some amount 

 of frost when it receives sufficient summer heat to harden 

 its root, but comparatively few of those regions are suited 

 for practical tea-growing. 



As far back as 1872, some tea plants were sent from 

 China to the Kew gardens in England, for the purpose 

 of testing the possibility of its growth in that country. 

 The attempt, however, ended in failure, the seeds never 

 germinating, later efforts under more careful training 

 meeting with the same fate. Considerable success 

 attended its introduction into the islands of Bourbon and 

 Mauritius, in 1844, the tea produced being pronounced 

 as " excellent in flavor, but lacking in that strength and 

 aroma so characteristic of the Chinese variety." 



Its cultivation has been recently attempted in the 

 Philippines by the Spanish, in Sumatra and Borneo 

 by the Dutch, and by the French in Cochin-China, 

 nearly all of which experiments so far proving failures, 



