337 
separate the larger from the smaller leaves, and these again from the dust. 
The tea is then packed up in chests for the market. 
The Chinese put the finer kinds of tea into conic vessels, like sugar 
loaves, made of tutanag, tin, or lead, covering them with a neat packing of 
bamboo. The common tea is put into baskets, out of which it is emptied, 
and packed in boxes or chests, as soon as it is sold to the Europeans.*' 
It is not known what arts are used in China to give a variety of colour 
and flavour to their teas, which cannot all be satisfactorily accounted for 
from soil, situation, and the different seasons at which the leaves are 
gathered. In Japan the produce is chiefly consumed within the country; 
whereas in China , the exportation we know is very consideration, and the 
temptation great to exercise the arts of sophistication, in which it is notorious 
the Chinese are not deficient. 
In the Chinese drawings abovementioned, there are figures of several 
persons apparently separating the different kinds of tea, and drying it in the 
sun, with several baskets standing near them filled with a white substance, 
and in considerable quantity. To what use this may be applied is uncertain, 
as well as what the substance is; yet there is little doubt that it is used in 
the manufacturing of tea, because the Chinese do not introduce any thing 
into their pieces, but what relates in some respect to the subject. 
We are better acquainted with a vegetable substance which is employed 
in giving a flavour to tea. This is the Olea fragrans , the flowers of which 
are frequently to be met with in teas exported from China. The plant itself 
is now not unfrequent in our stoves.f 
The flowers also of the Camellia Sesanqua and of the Arabian Jasmin are 
sometimes mixed among the teas, for the same purpose of increasing their 
fragrance. The Chinese call the former Cha-whaw, or flower of tea. It is 
cultivated in vast abundance in China, not so much for this purpose, as for 
its nut, which yields an esculent oil , equal to the best which comes from Flo¬ 
rence. The Tea plant is particularly valuable from the facility of its culture 
on the sides and very tops of mountains, in situations fit for little else.lj: 
We are not certain what motive induced the natives of China and Japan 
first to use an infusion of tea; but it is highly probable that it was in order 
f Idem, p. 43. 
4 Q 
*' Lettsom, p. 36. 
J Staunton Embassy, Vol. II, p. 467 . 
