AT JAPAN AND JAVA. 87 



NOTES. 



Tea is easily obtained from seed, which should be used as 

 soon as ripe, or in a short time after it has been collected ; for it 

 soon loses its power of germination. The shrubs produce such 

 an abundance of flowers and seeds, that many of the seeds fall 

 and germinate under the old shrubs, which serve to renew the 

 plantations. Rapport de M. Guillemin, D. M. tyc. La Revue 

 Agricole. Fevrier, 1840, pp. 268, 269. 



Von Siebold states, that the best mode of propagation of the 

 tea plant is by seed, at distances of four feet apart. At Japan 

 the shrubs flower from November to February, and the sowing 

 takes place in the following autumn, when the seed is ripe, and 

 the plants spring up in May or June. After the first year 

 the plants are topped, hoed, and manured. The manure is 

 used both in a liquid and dry state. It consists of a mixture of 

 mustard seed and dried sardels (a kind of herring), oilcakes of 

 the Brassica Orientalis and other coleworts, together with human 

 dung and urine. These manures are found by experience to 

 be suitable to the heavy soils congenial to the tea plant, and to 

 exercise a decided influence on the improvement of the shrub. — 

 Nippon, part 6. 



Mr. Jacobson of Java states, that, as a general rule, the cul- 

 tivation of tea is conducted on the same principle as that of 

 coffee. He justly observes, however, that as leaves are the 

 product of the harvest, and not fruit or flowers, whatever mode 

 of cultivation is suitable to that is the one to be adopted. In 

 plains it must be treated as rice, and irrigated, a greater 

 slope being allowed for drainage ; and yet not so much as to 

 wash away the earth and occasion a loss of soil. 



The best mode of cultivation at Java, is from seed sown 

 in the ground where the plants are intended to grow, and not 

 from seedlings taken from nurseries ; because this latter mode 



g 4 



