smallness of the leaf when picked. The various descriptions of the black diminish in quality and value as they 
are gathered later in the season, until they reach the lowest kind, called by us Bohea, and by the Chinese 
(Ta-cha) “ large tea/’ on account of the maturity and size of the leaves. The early leaf buds in spring, being 
covered with a white silky down, are gathered to make Pekoe, which is a corruption of the Canton name 
Pa-ko, “ white down.” A few days’ longer growth produce what is here styled “ black-leaved pekoe.” The 
more fleshy and matured leaves constitute Souchong; as they grow larger and coarser they form Congou; 
and the last and latest picking is Bohea. The tea farmers, who are small proprietors or cultivators, give the 
tea a rough preparation, and then take it to the contractors, whose business it is to adapt its further prepa- 
ration to the existing nature of the demand. 
Various ways of making Tea. — “ The Japanese reduce their tea to a fine powder by pounding it; 
they put certain portions of this into a tea cup, pour boiling water upon it, and stir it up, and drink it as 
soon as it is cool enough.” Dubuisson’s manner of making tea : “ Put the tea into a kettle with cold water, — 
cover it close, set it on the fire, and make it all but boil, when you see a sort of white scum on the surface, 
take it from the fire, when the leaves sink it is ready.” — “ The night before you wish to have tea ready for 
drinking, pour on it as much cold water as you wish to make tea — next morning pour off the clear liquor, 
and when you wish to drink it, make it warm.” 
The above are from “ L’Art de Limonadier,” de Dubuisson, Paris. A great saving may be made by 
making a tincture of tea, thus, pour boiling water upon it, and let it stand twenty minutes, putting into each 
cup no more than is necessary to fill it about one third full, — fill each cup up with hot water from the urn, 
thus the tea will be always hot and equally strong to the end, — and one tea spoonful will be found enough 
for three cups for each person : according to the present mode of making it, three times the quantity is often 
used.” — See Trusler’s Way to be Rich and Respectable. 
The use of tea as a beverage in China is of antiquity beyond record, and is as universal as it is ancient; 
from the Emperor to the lowest peasant or labourer, all alike drink tea, varying only in quality. That con- 
sumed by the common people must, however, be not only of an inferior class, but very weak ; as the native 
attendants on Lord Macartney’s embassy were continually begging the refuse leaves, which had been already 
used by the English, because, after pouring fresh water over them, they obtained a better beverage than what 
they had usually an opportunity of enjoying. On the other hand, some tea presented by the Emperor 
Kien Long to Lord Macartney, was found to want somewhat of the astringency which the British tea drinker 
is accustomed to look for and to value in the infusion. 
Mr. Ellis, in an account of one of Lord Amherst’s visits of ceremony to Kwang, a mandarin of high 
rank, says, “The tea served round was that used only on occasions of ceremony, called yu-tien: it was a 
small leaf highly-flavoured green tea. In Lord Amherst’s and Hwang’s cups there was a thin perforated 
silver plate, to keep the leaves down, and let the infusion pass through. The cups used by the mandarins 
of rank, in form resemble coffee-cups, and are placed in a wooden or metal saucer, shaped like the Chinese 
boats.” 
From Mr. Ellis’s Journal, we transcribe the following passage, descriptive of a plantation, “Our walk 
led us through a valley, where we saw, for the first time, the tea plant. It is a beautiful shrub, resembling 
a myrtle, with a white flower extremely fragrant. The plantations were not of any extent, and were either 
surrounded by small fields of other cultivation, or placed in detached spots ; we also saw the ginger in small 
patches covered with a frame-work to protect it from the birds.” 
It is hardly credible that on the first introduction of the Chinese leaf, which now affords our daily re- 
freshment, or the American leaf, whose sedative fumes made it so long a universal favourite, or the Arabian 
berry, whose aroma exhilarates its European votaries, that the use of these harmless novelties should have 
spread consternation among the nations of Europe, and have been anathematized by the terrors and fictions 
of some of the learned. Yet this seems to have happened. Patin, who wrote so furiously against the intro- 
duction of antimony, spread the same alarm at the use of tea, which he calls “l’impertinente nouveaute du 
siecle.” In Germany, Hahnemann considered tea-dealers as immoral members of society, lying in wait for 
men’s purses and lives ; and Dr. Duncan, in his treatise on hot liquors, suspected that the virtues attributed 
to tea were merely to encourage the importation. 
Many virulent pamphlets were published against the use of this shrub, from various motives. In 1670, 
a Dutch writer says, it was ridiculed in Holland, under the name of hay- water. The progress of this famous 
plant, says an ingenious writer, has been something like the progress of truth, suspected at first, though 
very palatable to those who had courage to taste it, resisted as it encroached, abused as its popularity seemed 
to spread, and establishing its triumph at last, in cheering the whole land from the palace to the cottage, 
only by the slow and resistless efforts of time and its own virtues. 
Mr. Hanway enumerates “the mischiefs of tea, and seems willing to charge upon it every mischief that 
he can find. He begins, however, by questioning the virtues ascribed to it, and denies that the crews of the 
Chinese ships are preserved in their voyage homewards from the scurvy by tea. About this report I have 
