280 [Assembly 



northern barriers, eastern bulwarks, and the warm beatings of a 

 southern sun; a munificent Providence, foreseeing all these require- 

 ments, has bountifully provided and entrusted them to the hardy, 

 vigorous, industrious husbandman of our country. God has left him 

 nothing to ask, he is only required to act. 



NO. III. 



Cultivation simple and easy — Manner of planting the seed — Cultivation of the plant — 

 Picking the leaves — Labor of women and children — Cost of picking — No 

 improvement attempted by the Chinese — Mode of curing tea in China by fireing 

 and sun drying — Mode proposed in the United States, by sun drying only — 

 Great reduction of labor and expense — Tea better cured — Superior quality of 

 Tea sent from China to Russia — Its cause — Age injurious to the quality of 

 Tea — Dyeing Teas in China — Number of plants upon an acre — Product of the 

 plant — Total expense of gathering and curing Tea. 



1. Plantlvg. — No plant is more simple in its cultivation, and 

 none requires less skill and attention than the Tea Plant; any one 

 who can cultivate a cabbage can cultivate the Tea Plant. The Tea 

 Seed as has been already remarked, is about the size of a buck-shot. 

 In China it is sown so soon as it ripens in October and November. 

 The hole, like a hill of corn, is three or four inches deep and several 

 seeds are thrown into one hole, as the greater part of the whole do 

 not vegetate at all* The sprouts appear the second or third month 

 after the seed is planted, and as they grow, the earth is gathered or 

 hoed up a little around the root. These plantings are in seedling 

 beds of good, though not rich soil, and planted thick. When suffi- 

 ciently grown for transplanting, they are set in rows, four feet apart 

 each way, for permanent growth, so that an acre of ground, 400 

 feet by about 109, will require 2500 plants to stock it fully. The 

 plant is not generally manured, nor is it subject to irrigation, a branch 

 of cultivation so common and expensive among Oriental nations. 

 Nor would it be practicable to adopt the system of irrigation gene- 

 rally in the Tea Plantations of China, seeing they are often situated 

 upon the sides of hills and mountains; formed into hedges, and in 

 fact placed just where a footing can be found for their support. 



I do not mean to be understood as asserting that the Tea Plant is 

 never irrigated, for I am aware that in some districts it is, but that 

 generally it does not require the application of that labor. 



•Foreign Missionary Magazine. Sir George Staantoa's Embassy. — Fountain. 



