TEA AND THE TEA PLANT. 



67 



China, and a commission was appointed in 1836 to visit Assam and report 

 to Government. 



Once more the botanical authorities could not, however, agree. Griffith 

 recommended Assam as the best locality for the proposed plantation, but 

 Wallich advocated that the Himalaya should be first tried, then Assam, 

 and lastly the mountains of South India. Further he urged that the 

 China plant and not the degraded Assam plant " should be experimented 

 with. The controversy about black tea and green tea and of the separate 

 plants from which these were supposed to be made — a problem that had 

 perplexed many writers — was doubtless once more the will-o'-the-wisp 

 that largely influenced Wallich to assert that the Indian plant was a 

 Camellia and not a Thea. In guarded yet unmistakable language Griffith 

 told his opinions, even though these were inimical to the views of his 

 superior and colleague. His report — the " Tea Plant of Upper Assam " 

 (1836) — deals with the subject in a masterly fashion, and will richly 

 repay perusal. Griffith collected the wild tea of Assam, and his specimens 

 are preserved in Kew. They differ in no respect from the so-called indi- 

 genous tea of the modern plantations, so that there is every reason for 

 believing that both Bruce and Scott had actually discovered the true tea 

 plant in Assam. 



Wallich, Eoyle, and Falconer upheld the Himalayan theory and the 

 China plant ; Griffith and McClelland urged the claims of Assam and 

 the Assam plant. Wallich prevailed, and Gordon was in consequence 

 redeputed to China, and on his return to India with a large supply of 

 plants, seeds, &c., he resigned his position on the Commission without 

 ever having written a report of his Chinese explorations. It is not known 

 how much money the Government of India spent from first to last in 

 their tea experiments, but it is recorded that Gordon's deputation to China 

 on two occasions and the expenditure connected with the Indian Tea Com- 

 mission cost ^18,000. The first sample of Indian-grown tea was sent to 

 England in 1838. 



A third mission to China (the expense of which was partly borne by 

 the Royal Horticultural Society of England) was organised and success- 

 fully conducted by Mr. Robert Fortune, who wrote in consequence " Three 

 Years' Wanderings in China" (1847), "The Tea Districts of China" 

 (1853), and "A Residence among the Chinese" (1857). These works 

 contain full particulars of his studies of the Chinese industry, as also 

 details regarding the plants, seed, &c., conveyed by him to India. 

 The industry was in consequence securely established and gigantic 

 advances crowded rapidly on each other. Plantations were opened out 

 in Kumaon, Dehra Dun, Kungra, Assam, the Nilghiri Hills, and elsewhere. 

 The systems of growing and manufacturing were greatly improved, and 

 machinery began to be invented to do all that hand labour accomplished 

 in China, and both more satisfactorily as well as more economically. 



Mr. C. A. Bruce was in 1836 appointed Superintendent of the Govern- 

 ment Tea Plantations in Assam, and in thirty years' time such progress 

 had been made that the Government were able to retire. It had been 

 freely announced that when the industry no longer required the fostering 

 care of the Government, it would be handed over to private enterprise. 

 Griffith's views of Assam and the Assam plant had thus been confirmed. 



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