112 CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION. 



India grades supplying the absent quality of strength 

 to the latter. Strenuous efforts have and are being made 

 to introduce them, but so far with indifferent success. 

 The character of the liquor after the infusion is so entirely 

 foreign in body, color, flavor and aroma from that of the 

 China and Japan sorts to which the people have been 

 accustomed, and which appears to be an inherited taste, 

 so deeply is it set, that little or no progress can be made 

 in these attempts. The great strength, pungency and 

 pronounced flavor of the choicer grades rendering them 

 valuable only for blending purposes. Still it is difficult 

 to overestimate the importance of India as a source of 

 tea supply. Twenty years ago it furnished only about 

 10,000,000 pounds to the world's supply, but so rapidly 

 has its production increased that the crop for 1892 is 

 estimated at 110,000,000 pounds. Its consumption in 

 England is annually increasing, the total deliverance 

 for that year being 103,000,000 pounds as against 

 99,000,000 pounds for 1890, while for 1889 the increase 

 was upwards of 12,000,000 pounds over that of 1888. 

 These enormous strides in the consumption of India teas 

 in England is only equalled by that of Ceylon teas, the 

 British public demanding strong, dark liquoring teas 

 irrespective of flavor, aroma or effect. 



CEYJL.O1V TEAS. 



The tea-plant, though claimed to have been first intro- 

 duced into Ceylon by the English, who, on principle, 

 " claim everything," was originally carried by the Dutch 

 from China to that island as early as 1800, notwith- 

 standing that Percival maintains that it was first dis- 

 covered there in a wild state. But while it is admitted 

 that a species known as Matara was found in some parts 



