70 JOUENAL OF THE ROYAL HOEPICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



speaks of the best tea growing in the middle of the trees, exposed to the 

 sun. " The tea whose leaves are long and large is the best, and that 

 which hath small, short leaves is not esteemed good ; that which hath its 

 leaves curled is the most valuable, and that which hath them quite smooth 

 is the worst." Here we have the practical man discussing the large and 

 the small leaved forms of the plant for which the botanists a little later 

 invented the names viridis and Bohea. 



Lettsom and Hayne figured and described the forms of the Chinese tea 

 plant so accurately and fully, that it is difficult to understand how any mis- 

 conception should have prevailed when, some years later, the finest Chinese 

 tea plant was found to be indigenous to xAssam. 



History has but repeated itself, however, for had the Indian botanical 

 experts of the early decades of the nineteenth century carefully considered 

 this subject they would have saved not only themselves but the planters 

 endless trouble and expense, and would in consequence have refused to 

 allow the attempt to be made to organise an Indian tea industry exclusively 

 with the small thick and smooth-leaved plant that had alone, apparently, 

 been procured from China. And w^hen their attention had been drawn to 

 the Assam plant they should have instantly recognised that it was the 

 superior stock of China (figured by Lettsom, Hayne, and others), instead 

 of having indulged (as did Wallich) in an academic controversy as to its 

 being a Camellia, but not the true Thea of Linnaeus. 



Thus we are confronted with an old and well-authenticated fact, that 

 comes to us almost like a new discovery, because hitherto it has been so 

 completely overlooked, namely, that in China the finest tea plants are 

 scarcely, if at all, different from the finest Assam races. 



Hence it follows that when the Indian Government spent large sums in 

 procuring seed of the tea plant, a clever trick may have been successfully played 

 off, namely, of sending to India only the very most inferior seed. If this surmise 

 be correct it is highly likely that, but for the happy discovery in India itself of 

 a superior indigenous plant, the establishment of the Indian tea industry might, 

 by the practical joke suggested, have been retarded by many years. At all 

 events most Indian planters regard the introduction of the Chinese small-leaved 

 plant as having been a calamity which took them years of heavy expenditure 

 to efiace. But it is of no serious consequence whether the cultivated tea plants 

 be viewed as comprising many species (from the botanist's standpoint) or only 

 many sports or even climatic races. If the forms indicated yield different 

 qualities of tea, if they can be grown under certain soil and climatic conditions 

 and not under others, if they require shade or seek full exposure to the sun, 

 these and such like peculiarities are of supreme value to the planter. Every- 

 thing that has been written of tea, from the very earliest time down to the 

 present day, points to the study of the plant being of the utmost value, and 

 moreover it is a subject that has been disgracefully neglected. Only the 

 other day I laid an assortment of specimens of these plants before a botanist 

 of emmence, and observed that they manifested one of the most remarkable 

 examples of adaptation to cultivation in existence. He replied, " Are 

 you, however, correct in calling them all forms of one species ? I should 

 think there are several species in the series." This shows that even to the 

 casual observer there are differences, and to the planter these differences in 

 my opinion denote aspects of interest that have been far too much neglected. 

 The difficulty is, however, to find words to express the differences that would be 

 intelligible to the planter. 



