VARIETIES OF THE TEA PLANT. 53 



plants were sent from different districts of China celebrated for their 

 Teas, and are now thriving luxuriantly in all the plantations throughout 

 the Kohistan of the North-west Provinces and Punjab. Both green 

 and black Tea plants were sent, the former from Whey Chow, 

 Mooyeen, Chusan, Silver Island, and Tein Tang, near Ningpo, and 

 the latter from Woo-e San, Tein San, and Tsin Gan, in the Woo-e 

 district. But so similar are the green and black Tea plants to each 

 other, and the plants from the Amoy districts, that the most practised 

 eye, when they are mixed together, cannot separate 



Several varieties. _ J 



them, showing that they are nothing more than mere 

 varieties of one and the same plant, the changes in the form of the 

 leaf being brought about by cultivation. Moreover, throughout the 

 plantation fifty varieties might easily be pointed out ; but they run so 

 into each other as to render it impossible to assign them any trivial 

 character, and the produce of the seed of different varieties does not 

 produce the same varieties only, but several varieties, proving that the 

 changes are entirely owing to cultivation ; nor do the plants, cultivated 

 at 6,000 feet in the Himalayas, differ in the least in their varieties from 

 those cultivated at 2,500 feet of altitude in the Dehra Dhoon. 



" That the Assam plant is a marked species' is true, it being distin- 

 guished bv its large membranous and lanceolate leaf. 



Assam species. 



small flower, and upright growth. 



" It is a very inferior plant for making Tea, and its leaves are there- 

 fore not used.* Though the plants received from the different districts 

 of China do not differ from those first sent to the plantations, it is 

 highly important to know that the Tea plants from well-known green 

 and black Tea districts of China now exist in the plantations, as it is 

 stated that local causes exert a great influence in the quality of the 

 Teas as much as the manufacture does. The expense, therefore, 

 incurred in stocking the Government plantations with the finest kinds 

 and varieties of Tea plants procurable in China, though great, will be 

 amply repaid. From them superior kinds of Tea are produced." 



The above extract is a sample of the said " Records." 

 They abound in errors and highly coloured statements, which 

 induced many to embark in Tea on unfavourable sites, and 

 "the red book" (it is bound in a red cover) is not exactly 

 blessed by the majority of the Himalayan planters ! 



* A little enquiry would have shown this was not true, even when it 

 was written. All Tea planters, brokers, and all interested in Tea, know now 

 (many knew it then) that the " Assam species," viz., the indigenous, makes the 

 most valuable Tea produced. E. M. 



