Ill 



The whole of the bank at Tezpur seems admirably suited when 

 first opened out for the growth of tea. It needs fairly thorough 

 cultivation right from the commencement, but with this gives pro- 

 bably bushes as luxuriant as any other part of the valley. It would 

 be a mistake however to call it a rich soil. The constituents are 

 admirably balanced when the soil is virgin, but after about ten 

 years of the intensive cropping in vogue here, need manuring if 

 the land is not to become much less valuable. The change in the 

 composition of the soil in ten years is shown in the following 

 analyses of samples from Sonajuli : 



or calculated, as before, on the non-sandy part of the soil : 



Virgin Soil. Soil ten yea rs 



under Tea. 



there being a loss during the ten years (as shown in a preceding 

 chapter) of 16*6 per cent, of Organic Matter, 21*4 per cent, of Nitro- 

 gen, and n-8 per cent, in the Phosphoric Acid, the whole soil being 

 thus much impoverished in the constituents most needed by the tea 

 plant. 



Very fortunately, round and in this bank there exist, apparently, 

 very rich deposits of peat and other bheel soil material. Close to 

 Addabari, for instance, in what is apparently the old bed of the 



