TEA AND THE TEA PLANT. 



85 



tea. This has accordingly led to various systems of plucking. Bruce 

 in his report of 1838 speaks of the " people employed nipping off with the 

 forefinger and the thumb the fine end of the branch, with about four leaves 

 on, and sometimes even more, if they look tender." For some years 

 past the rule has become all but universally accepted to pluck only two 

 leaves and a bud, and in some gardens (or for special purposes) only one 

 leaf and a bud. Thus, much finer plucking, with, in consequence, better 

 quality of tea, has recently become the rule than formerly prevailed. 



Tea cultivation is thus a very different agricultural operation from 

 that of wheat-growing or even of fruit-growing. The plant is not raised 

 for a supply of fruits or seeds, nor for tuberous roots or fibre-yielding 

 stems, but for a succession of fresh shoots. It is, moreover, a perennial, 

 and necessitates special treatment to ensure the objects of crop rotation. 

 A liberal root-production is essential ; an open, well-drained soil and an 

 ample supply of readily obtainable soil food are essential to nourish 

 continuous flushing. 



It need be no matter for surprise that during the past fifty years or so 

 the methods pursued in almost every operation have been changed, such, 

 for example, as those of pruning, plucking, draining, manuring, &c. 

 Knowledge has been unremittingly sought after ; traditions, largely ac- 

 quired through the early instruction of the imported Chinese tea-planters, 

 have had ta be uprooted or abandoned and improved and more rational 

 methods substituted. The result can be briefly characterised as vast 

 economies effected, finer quality and greater purity attained, and en- 

 hanced yield to the acre accomplished. To secure improvement in 

 quality and reduction in price is no mean achievement in any industry, 

 and the extent to which India has thrust China out of the markets of the 

 world is but the natural consequence of this progression from primitive 

 rules of thumb to rational and scientific methods. This view may be 

 abundantly confirmed by the figures showing the yield per acre. In 1873-74 

 the crop of Assam averaged 250 to 280 lb. per acre ; in 1904-05 it 

 averaged 450 to 500 lb. And let it be once more repeated, the leaf now 

 plucked is much finer than formerly. 



The manufacture has been similarly revolutionised. Rolling the leaf 

 by hand and foot has long since been abandoned in India. Drying and 

 firing over open charcoal fires (with the attendant evils) are systems 

 discontinued thirty years ago. Since the first feeble efforts at manufacture 

 by machinery, in the early sixties, stage by stage the older and cruder 

 methods have disappeared, and now the work from first to last in the 

 Indian tea factory has become, to all intents and purposes, an automatic 

 process, in which the risk of adulteration and uncleanliness has been 

 reduced to an almost negligible quantity. 



Deterioration of Stock. — After what has been said of the tea plant being 

 a perennial which grows " year in year out " on the same soil, and is made to 

 yield a succession of weekly or fortnightly "flushes," and to endure the severe 

 annual pruning essential to the succeeding year's " flushings," little surprise 

 need be expressed at the stage being ultimately attained when the plant becomes 

 exhausted and diseased. Morever, since no rational selection and development 

 of stock has as yet been attempted in the tea industry, other than to see that 

 supplies are drawn from certain reserved plots of " Assam indigenous" or 



