456 Cultivation of Tea in China. 



soon as picked from the trees, are put into the pan ; next 

 rolled, and spread thin, to separate the leaves, which adhere 

 to each other ; again well dried, spread, sifted, picked, and 

 fired two or three times more (especially if it is damp weather), 

 before it is in a marketable state. 



There are many names given to tea after it is manufactured, 

 according to the time of gathering, the name of the place, 

 quality of the land on which it grows, or the age of the trees. 

 Rich land on the hills yields superior tea to that in the val- 

 leys, and leaves from trees only three years' old are more 

 highly esteemed than the leaves of older trees. 



Many frauds are committed in the tea trade, by improper 

 intermixtures of old or damaged sorts with new, in order to 

 sell the whole at a good price. To prevent such impositions, 

 the East India Company keep an inspector, who resides at 

 Canton during the buying season, and whose duty it is to 

 examine the chests, which must be all opened by the sellers 

 for this purpose. 



We have had for many years two sorts of the tea plant in 

 our gardens. Modern botanists have abolished the genus 

 Thea^ and placed it under the Caraellm genus. It is curious 

 that, without any knowledge of the sexual system, the Chinese 

 have done the same : cha^ or tcha^ is their name of tea, and 

 tcha faa (tea flower) that of Camell/«. But our botanists 

 have overlooked one thing, that is, they have put them down 

 as species, whereas one only, the Bohea, may be designated a 

 species, and the viridis a variety only. It is, indeed, a ques- 

 tion, whether even the Chinese themselves know the original 

 kind ; because the best varieties, obtained from long experience 

 and cultivation, are called by them the true ; and the wild sort, 

 found on the mountains of Ho-nan, is called the tchoiio tcha, 

 or bastard tea. 



It has been long an object with our politicians at home 

 and abroad, to introduce the cultivation of tea into some of 

 our foreign possessions, lying in the same degree of latitude 

 wiili Ciiina. Bengal, or some of its dependencies northward, 

 or even the hills in the interior of that kingdom, may, no 

 doubt, be found favourable to its growth. With this view it 

 was that Lord Macartney and Sir George Staunton procured 

 a few plants, of the cultivated sort, from the tea country which 

 they passed through on their over-land journey from Pekin to 

 Canton in 1793, which were sent to Bengal, and which no 

 doubt received the attention of the local government at the 

 time. But, although there maybe no doubt that the plant would 

 succeed well in that and many other places in the British 

 dominions, yet the question is, could it be manufactured 



