38 BOTANICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND FORM. 



single kind Camillia and is by them classed as Thea- 

 Camillia. Others asserting that no relation whatever 

 exists between these two plants, maintaining that the Thea 

 and 'Camillia are widely different and of a distinct 

 species. Yet, though the Camillia bears the same name 

 among the Chinese as Thea and possesses many of its 

 structural characteristics, distinctions are made between 

 them by many eminent botanists, who hold that they 

 differ widely and materially and are mostly agreed in 

 the statement that the true Tea-plant is distinguished 

 from the Camillia in having longer, narrower, thinner, 

 more serrated and less shiny leaves, and that a marked 

 difference is also noticeable in the form and contents of 

 the fruit or pod. 



Davis argues that they constitute two genera^ closely 

 allied but yet different, the distinctions consisting prin- 

 cipally in the fruit or seed. The seed-vessel of the Thea 

 being a three-lobed capsule, with the lobes strongly 

 marked, each the size of a currant, containing only 

 a single round seed, the lobes bursting vertically in 

 the middle when ripe, exposing the seed. The capsule 

 of the Camillia is triangular in shape, much larger in 

 size, and though three-celled is but single-seeded. Ben- 

 tham and Hooker, who have thoroughly revised the 

 "genera plantatum" say they can find no good reason 

 by which they can separate the Tea-plant as a genus dis- 

 tinct from the Camillia, and so class it as Thea- Camillia. 

 While Cambesedes contends that they are widely sepa- 

 rated by several intervening genera, the difference being 

 entirely in the form of the fruit or pod ; and Griffin, who 

 is well qualified to form a correct opinion, states that, 

 from an examination of the India Tea-plant and two 

 species of the Camillia taken from the Kyosa hills, he 

 found no difference whatever. The dehiscence in both 



