The tropical agriculturist. [March i, 1892. 
GARDENING BEET. 
This useful salad plant luxuriates in just 
sueh a soil and situation as suits the carrot, viz, 
51 deep and warm light sandy loam, rich and sweet, 
and in an open and sunny spot. The roots 
abstract a good deal of potash, soda, carbonic acid, 
and chloride of sodium (common salt) from the 
soil, which should therefore be rich in these 
principles. Hence salt, kainit (which supplies 
potash), nitrate of soda, and, soot or any kind of 
charred or burnt material, are the best manures 
for this crop, and may be freely applied either 
to the soil Before sowing, or after the plants are 
up, in the shape of a top dressing. For all 
ordinary purposes the first week in May is quite 
soon enough to sow beet; if done much before 
this the roots are apt to become too large and 
coarse. For small gardens. Dell's Crimson and 
Nutting's Dwarf Red are perhaps the best kinds 
to grow, and a new variety known as the Chelten- 
ham Black or Green-top has lately been attract- 
ing much attention. In lifting beet take particular 
care to avoid breaking the roots ; if any of even 
the smaller fibres are injured the roots bleed, 
and both the colour and quality suffer. The 
best way is to dig a deep trench, and take 
the roots one by one out of the flat side or wall 
of it. — S, L Observer. 
TEA. 
Continuing his remarks, already quoted in the 
Liverpool Mercury, R. M. wrrites : — 
In the strange Republic of Chili, with its Indians 
and Europeans, its narrow seaboard and wild plateaus, 
the Natives drink mate. Sitting in their windowless 
houses on a bleak night, with all airholes stopped 
up, they sing strange songs to the sound of the 
guitar, and the dark-eyed girls dance, castanets in 
hand, while the old, blear-eyed women sit and suck 
mate. They do not drink it as we drink tea, but they 
suck it through a tube like a pipe stem. A black, 
fire-smoked jar stands on the earthern brasier all 
the time, and in the intervals of the song and dance 
the jar is passed from hand to hand, each one 
using the tube in turn. The taste of the liquor is 
disagreeable at first, but it soon grows pleasant, for 
it contains the essential of tea, and all the poor 
people use it. The methods of imbibing mate are 
repulsive to us, but when we live in Rome it is best 
to do as the R,omans do, and so we soon acquire 
the Chileno habit, and take our tea under new con- 
ditions. It is this widespread yearning after tea 
which made the ever-green plant take such a deep 
hold on humanity. Dharma carried the seeds of 
the plant to China long ago, and the Chinese culti- 
vated it in every spare place. They did not give it 
the best ground ; that was reserved for rice and 
vegetables. They planted the seeds of the ever-green 
on hillsides, on embankments, and in places 
where little else would grow. The plant was hardy, 
and survived all its ill-treatment. It lived through 
hoeing and pruning and iasect plagues, and became 
a strong defiant plant. It will grow to be a tree 30 
teet in height, and a foot in diameter, if let alone. 
The leaves of the Chinese tea plant wi 1 expand to 
four inches in length, and some of the Indian tea 
plants grow to nine inches, but they are not allowed 
to develop into trees. They are set out in rows 
in a garden, and suffered to grow to three, four, 
or even five feet in heiglit, but that is all. The 
flower of the tree is whitish, or aromatic, and pretty ; 
the leaves resemble the willow, but closer is the rela- 
tionship it bears to the caniellia; and more of that 
anon. They have about l,iM) tea plants to the acre, 
and this produces in a ycai' say pounds of tea, 
though it is almost needless to add that tea garden- 
ing varies with districts, (jountries, and clinuites. 
The plants arc dug up every twelve years, and a 
new seedling is planted, which is ready for picking 
in about four years or less, according to tlic condi- 
tions. T))0 (Jliinese had a uionopoly of tea for cen- 
turies, though our first Klii|)incnts came from Java, 
fiud iti waa well ou in the 10th century before wc 
ever heard of it. It will be an interesting story 
to tell how tea was first introduced to England, and 
we will come to that later. 
The Indian people seemed to have forgotten aO 
about tea, and nobody dreamed that India was the 
real home of the plant. It was in the year 1820 
that Mr. David Scott sent some leaves from a 
northern province of India to the Government at 
Calcutta. These leaves were said to belong to the 
wild tea plant, and Mr. Scott wanted the Govern- 
ment Botanist to examine them. Now, Botanists are 
very clever people as a rule, but it is perfectly 
astonishing to find how little discernment many of 
them possess. Botany seems to reduce a man's 
mind to the smallest possible technical limits, and 
the few great-souled botanists only go to pro^e the 
rule. This botanists at Calcutta said the leaves 
were those of the camellia, the familiar ornamental 
flowering plant which grows so heartily in our hot 
houses in England today. Such faith did Mr. Scott 
and his allies have in the botanist, that the master 
was dropped out of sight. Ihe gold mine of the tea 
trade was coolly passed over and forgotten, and the 
leaves from Kuoh Behar and Rangpur were no more 
remembered by the wise men of l alcutta. It was 
in the year 1834 that another man, more determined 
than Mr. Scott, said that " (Jamellia or not, these are 
tea leaves," and then began a new era. 'The leaves 
of the tree were indeed those of the ever-green, 
which had filled China with the wealth of Europe. 
It was discovered that in the deep, pathless, tiger- 
hunted, fever-cursed jungles of Assam, the tea tree 
grew wild. We never saw wheat grow wiid, the 
Chinese never saw tea grow wdd; but here, in the 
poisonous jungle, the tea plant was growing wild. 
It was a startling discovery, for Nature seldom makes 
a mistake. If tlie tree had been an alien it would 
not have flourished so through long cenruries, un- 
known and uncared for in this Burmese jungle. Men 
were sent to Cliina to seek out the implements and 
the gardeners for the cultivation of this indigenous 
tea plant, and the work was begun in England's 
mighty colony. The tea fever seized the people 
just as the gold fever has taken hold of other races, 
and everybody who could raise money or interest 
went into the trade. In 1836 a pound of tea was sent 
to England from the indigenous leaves of the Assam 
tea plant. In 1 10 the great Assam Tea Company 
was formed, and the trade has gone on ever since 
with strange fluctuations. Indian tea was better than 
Chinese tea, but English palates had grown accus- 
tomed to the flavour of the Cielestials' plant, and a 
new taste had to be acquired. We reject tea which 
is much superior to what we have been in the babi'^ 
of drinking, simply because it is strange to our taste. 
Then, too, the tea planters, in their haste to grow 
rich, forgot the old laws of Leviticus, which are 
founded in adamant. The "shall not" of the law- 
giver was rooted deep in Nature's heart. The growers 
went into the moist depths of the hitherto untrodden 
jungle, and brought forth the seeds of the tea plant, 
and set them in well-prepared gardens. But the 
new conditions were irot favourable to the moisture- 
loving plants of the jungle, and the evergreen be- 
came delicate and difficult to rear. Fortunes were 
lost in the undertakings of foolish people who dreamt 
not of tlie undying nature of law. Fire burns, 
water drowns; and no policemen are ever required 
to see that they obey the law. " Thou shalt not," 
if based on truth, is eternal. The Ixidian tea was 
a failure until the wise men saw what was needed. 
The Indian plant could not succeed on the broad 
garden lands of Assam, because the jungle had been 
swept away. The Chinese plant had contrived, 
through long centuries, to live under hard condi- 
tions, and now it was brought back to its ancestral 
home. To live under the new conditions, would soon 
have told injuriously on the har lv Chinese tree, for 
it was not used to be coddled and cared for in an 
equable climate; but it learned how to share its 
rugged hardiness with its Indian kinsmen, and the 
result was wonderful. The Assam tree, the indigenous 
plant, was hard to rear; but it was strangely good. 
The Chinese relation was strong and wiry and easy 
to rear, and the hybrid product of the two made 
