NATURE OF THE SOIL. 59 



delicate flavour of the Pouchong tea suited to our 

 mode of using tea, mixing it, as we do, with sugar 

 and milk. We require a strong tea, and strength 

 may depend more on astringency than aroma ; and 

 that quality, in all probability, may be less ex- 

 posed to injury by copious moisture, than the 

 volatile principle on which flavour is very generally 

 supposed to depend. 



The soil then should be of a texture to receive and 

 part with water freely. It is on the just balance 

 between these extremes that its suitableness de- 

 pends ; and this again must be regulated by its 

 locality. * 



There is a coarse kind of granite everywhere 

 found along the coast of China, which easily breaks 

 down and crumbles by the action of the atmosphere. 

 If the plant be found growing on mountains of this 

 description, in an elevated position, and on a some- 

 what rapid declivity, in a climate where the rains 

 are copious, and the sun ardent, we shall find the 

 soil broken down, and the alumina washed away, 



* Mr. Gordon, who seems an acute observer, and whose de- 

 scription of the tea plantations he saw at Amoy is exceedingly 

 valuable, comes to the conclusion that " the tea plant requires ab- 

 solutely a free soil, not icet and not dry, but of a texture to retain 

 moisture, and the best site is one not so low as that at which 

 water is apt to spring from the sides of the hill, nor so high as to 

 be exposed to the violence of stormy weather. There is no use 

 in attempting to cultivate the plant in an easterly exposure, 

 though it is sufficiently hardy to bear any degree of dry cold." 

 — Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. iv. 



