798 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[June i, 1889. 
the ingredients of the soil, but plants so continually 
depauperated and stripped require rich manure to 
supply their waste. In Japan the tea shrubs are 
sometimes grown as a hedge around a garden lot, 
but such plants are not stripped in this way. In 
gathering the earliest leaves, the pickers are careful 
to leave enough foliage at the end of the twig-* ; and 
the spring rains are depended on to stimulate the 
second and full crop of leaves. When these are scant 
or fail the tea harvest diminishes, and the regularity 
of the rains is so essential to a profitable cultiva- 
tion that it will be one of the causes of failure where 
everything else in soil, climate, manuring, and manufac- 
ture may be favourable. 
The first gathering is the most carefully done, for 
it goes to make the best sorts of black and green 
tea; and as the greatest part of the leaves are still 
undeveloped, the price must necessarily be very much 
higher. Such tea has a whitish down, like that on 
you ig brick leavfcs, and is called pecoe or " white hai-," 
and is most of it seat to England and Russia. fi» 
the last century the greeu tea known as Young Hy^on 
was made of these half-opened leaves picked in 
April aod named from two words meaning " rains 
before." The second gathering varies somewhat 
according to the latitude, May 15th to Juue, when 
the foliage is fullest. This season is looked forward 
to by women and children in the tea districts as 
their working time; they run in crowds to the middle- 
men, who have bargained for the leaves on the plants, 
or apply to farmers who have not hands. The average 
produce is from sixteen to twenty-two ounces of green 
leaves for the healthiest plants, down to ten and eight 
ounces. The tea when cured is about one-fifth of its 
first weight, and one thousaud square yards will con- 
tain about three hundred and fifty plants, each two 
feet across. They strip the twigs in the most sum- 
mary manner, and fill their baskets with healthy 
leaves, as they pick out the sticks and yellow leaves, 
for they are piid in this mauner. I if teen pounds 
Is a good day's work, and six to eight cents is a day's 
wages. The time for picking lasts only ten or twelve 
days. There are curing houses where families who 
grow and pick their own leaves bring them for sale 
at the market rate. The sorting employs many hands, 
for it is an important point in connection with the 
purity of the various descriptions, and much care is 
taken by dealers, in maintaining the quality of their 
lots, to have them cured carefully as well as sorted 
properly. The management of this great branch of 
industry exhibits some of the best features of Chinese 
country life. It is only over a portion of each farm 
that the plant is grown, and itB cultivation requires 
but little attention compared with rice and vege- 
tables. The most delicate kinds are looked after and 
cured by priests in their seoluded temples among 
the hills; these often have many acolytes who aid 
in preparing small lots to be sold at a high price. 
When the leaves are brought iu to the curers they 
are thinly spread on shallow trays to dry off all 
moisture by two or three hours' exposure. Meanwhile, 
the roasting pans are heating, and when properly 
warmed some handfuls of leaves are thrown on them, 
aud rapidly moved and shaken up for four or five 
minutes. The leaves make a slight crackling noise, 
become moist and flaccid as the juice is expelled, 
and give off even a sensible vapour. The whole is 
then poured out upon the rolling table, where each 
workman takes up a handful and makes it into a 
manageable ball, which he rolls back and forth on 
the rattan table to get rid of the s *p and moisture 
as the leaves are twisted. This operation chafes the 
hands even with great precaution. The balls are 
opened and shaken out, and then pissed on to other 
workmen, who go through the same operation till 
they reaoh the headman, who examines the leaves to 
see if they have become curled. When properly done, 
and cooled, they are returned to the iron pans, under 
which a low charcoal fun is burning in the brickwork 
which supports them, aud there kept in motion by 
the hand. If they need another rolling on the table 
it is now given them: an hour or more is spent in 
this manipulation, when they are dried to a dull green 
colour, aad can be put away to sifting and sorting. 
This colour becomes brighter after the exposure in 
sifting the cured leaves through sieves of various 
sizes; they are also winnowed to separate the dust, 
and afterward 6orted into the various descriptions of 
green tea. Finally, the finer kinds are again fired 
three or four times, and the coarse kinds, as Twaukay, 
Hyson, aud Hyson skin, once. The others furnish 
the Young Hyson, Gunpowder, Imperial, etc. Tea 
cured in this way is called Inh cha, or "green tea" 
by the Chinese, while the other, or bkck tea, is 
termed hung cha or "red tea," each name being taken 
from the tint of the infusion. 
After the fresh leaves are allowed to lie exposed 
to the air on the bamboo trays over-night or several 
hours, they are thrown into the air and tossed about 
and patted till they become soft: a heap is made of 
these wilted leaves and left to lie for an hour or more, 
when ihey have become moist and dark in colour. 
Tbey are then thrown on the hot pans for five minutes 
aud roded on the rattan table, previous to exposure 
out of doors for three or four hours on sieves, 
during which time they are turned over and opened 
out. After this they get a second roasting and 
rolling to give them their final curl. When the 
charcoal fire is rea<ly a basket shaped something like 
can hourglass is placed endwise over it, having a 
sieve in the middle on which the leaves are thinly 
spread. When dried five minutes in this way they 
undergo another rolling, and are then thrown into a 
heap until all the lot has passed over the fire. When 
this firing is finished, the leaves are opened out and are 
again thinly spread on the sieve in the basket for a 
few minutes, which finishes the drying and rolling 
for most of the heap, and makes the leaves a uni- 
form black. They are now replaced in the basket 
in greater mass, aud pushed against its sides by 
the hands in order to allow the heat to come up 
through the sieve and the vapor to escape; a basket, 
over all retains the heat, but the contents are 
turned over until perfectly dry, and the leaves be- 
come uniformly dark. 
It will be seen from this thit green tea retains 
far more of the peculiar oil and sap iu the leaves 
than the black, which undergo a partial fermenta- 
tion and emit a sensibly warm vapor as they lie iu 
heaps after the first roasting. They thus become 
oxidized by longer contact in a warm moist state 
with the atmosphere, and a delicate analysis will detect 
a greater amount of oxidized insoluble extract in an 
infusion of black than green tea. The same differ, 
ence has been observed in drying medicinal plants, 
as hemlock, belladonna, &c, for the apothecary's shop. 
Green teas are mostly produced in the region south 
of the Yangtsz' river and west of Ningpo among 
the hills as one goes toward the Poyang Lake in 
Chehkiang and Nganhwin. The black tea comes from 
Fuhkien in the south-east and Hupeh and Hunan 
in the central region: Kwaugtung_ and Sz'chueu 
provinces produce black, green, and brick teas. While 
the leaves of each species of the shrub can be cured 
into either green or black tea, the workmen in oue 
district are able, by practice, to produce one kind 
in a superior style and quality: those in another re- 
gion will do better with another kind. Soil, too, 
has a great influence, as it has in grape culture, 
in modifying the pro luce. Though the natives dis- 
tinguish only these three kinds, their varieties are 
far too numerous to remember, and the names are 
mostly unkuown in commerce. 
Of black teas, the great mass is called Congou, 
or the "well-worked," a name which took the place 
of the Bohea of one hundred and fifty years atro, 
and is now itself giving way to the term English 
Breakfast Tea. The finest sorts are either named 
from the place of their growth, or more frequently 
have fancy appellations in allusion to their color or 
form. Orange Pekoe is named " superior perfume ;" 
pure Pekoe is "Lantsz* "eyebrows"; "carnation hair," 
"red plum blossom," "lotus kernel," "sparrow's-tonguc," 
"dragon's pellet, " "dragons' whiskers, " "autumn 
dew," "pearl flower" or Chu-lan, are other names; 
Souchong and Powchong refer to the modes of packing. 
