86 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



certain forests of wild tea, the stock cannot be held to have been improved, but, 

 on the contrary, is rather degenerating. A few gardens allow certain plants to 

 grow unmolested in order to produce seed, from which they obtain a supple- 

 mentary revenue. This is a most reprehensible system, since the seed almost of 

 necessity is not only a hybrid but a tainted stock. There is no professional seed- 

 grower in the Indian tea area, and, therefore, no instance on record where 

 definite selection toward quality of tea or suitability to climate and soil has 

 been skilfullj' and persistently- conducted. In the seed gardens that exist it is 

 by no means uncommon to find two or more widely different plants growing 

 side by side, and all treated as one and the same. Moreover the plants that 

 are yielding seed to-day have done so perhaps for the last thirty or forty years. 

 Little or no attempt is thus made to ascertain whether or not the seed-bearing 

 plants are becoming diseased or exhausted, or to prevent the seed collected 

 being a hybrid of all the plants in the seed garden in place of a pure stock. 



In a work entitled " The Pests and Blights of the Tea Plant," written by 

 Dr. Mann and myself, many pages will be found devoted to this subject. Even 

 the briefest discussion of the various issues there raised would occupy many 

 pages. I will, therefore, only abstract one or two passages. " The tea is forced 

 to produce an abnormal or disproportionate amount of leaf ; and it has been 

 removed from the shade of the forest and from the association of its favourite 

 and helpful plants. Indeed, it seems very likely that the so-called rest that the 

 plants obtain in winter is more than obliterated by the annually recurring effort 

 that is required, shortly thereafter, to reco\ er from the severe shock of the pruning 

 (and probably also the deep hoeing) to which they are subjected." 



It is, perhaps, hardly necessary for me to repeat that one of the most 

 urgently necessary reforms that remain to be faced by the planters is the 

 establishment of professional seed gardens, where the improvement of the 

 races (by the selection of individual plants of proved merit, such as the 

 production of a high percentage of leaf, quality of leaf, suitability to climatic 

 conditions, freedom from disease, and the like) may be systergatically 

 prosecuted. And when this is seriously attempted, it most likely will be 

 found that much the more rational and satisfactory way will be to work 

 back from the tea garden itself, instead of forward from the so-called 

 " jungle seed garden." 



Uniformity of Stock. — I need not repeat, what has been urged so fully in 

 the '* Pests and Blights," all that can be said on this subject. Gardens of mixed 

 stock are far less productive than those in which a great proportion of the plants 

 grown are of one race. It is also fairly established that mixed stock favom's 

 the increase of pests and blights. Pure " Assam indigenous," for example, is 

 much less addicted to mosquito,* red spider, &c. than are the so-called " hybrid " 

 and " China " teas. It is in the plots of inferior races (jats) that these and 

 several other pests first make their appearance, and once established they 

 spread to the higher grade teas. " To plant out a garden with some half a dozen 

 jats of tea, one bush China, another Assam, a thn-d an inferior hybrid — or shall 

 we put it two-thirds Assam and one-third inferior jats (dispersed throughout 

 the better ya^s) ? — is to provide the conditions necessary for blights of all kinds 

 to attack the entire garden simultaneously. It was a mistaken notion that to 

 plant Assam and China bushes together secured a good blend of the properties 

 of the two stocks. It has long since been proved to satisfaction that there are 



* This term "mosquito," which is well understood by the Planters, is not meant 

 to designate the insect usually known by that name, which is a gnat, but an insect 

 {Helopeltis theivora) belonging to quite a different natural order, the Ilemiptera, or 

 plant bugs. — Ed. 



