VOL. XXXV1T. No. 14.) 
WHOLE No. 1471. ( 
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 6, 1878, 
PRICK SIX CENTS 
*2.50 PER YEAR. 
[Entered according to Act at Congress, In the year 1878, by the Rural Publishing- Company, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
Jtthstrial (Topics. 
THE TEA PLANT AND ITS PRODUCT. 
Besides the natural curiosity felt tyith re¬ 
gard to a plant whose produot enters so largely 
into the daily consumption of all civilized coun¬ 
tries. special attention has lately been attracted 
to the tea plant among ns by the efforts of the 
Commissioner of Agriculture to introduoo its 
cultivation among the ordinary branches of 
industry in those parts of the United States 
favorable to its growth. With this view a hun¬ 
dred thousand plants have been already raised 
under his direction in the national conservator¬ 
ies at Washington, and are intendod for free 
distribution for experimental purposes through¬ 
out the country. Already numerous experi¬ 
ments in its cultivation have been made in 
different States, notably by Dr. Smith of 
Greenville, Hmth Carolina, whose labors as well I 
i as those of others show that there are localities 
in the Southern States well adapted to the pro¬ 
duction of excellent tea, and that its profitable 
production in this country is merely a question 
of the price of labor. On the Pacific Coast 
where the climate is especially favorable for 
broad-leaved evergeens, both native and exotic, 
the tea plant flourishes much farther north than 
at the East, hut even there a recent experiment 
in its culture undertaken by a colony of Japan¬ 
ese baa been attended with poor results. Al¬ 
though our hopes of its remunerative cultivation 
in this country are by no means sanguine, solely 
Drying. 
Picking. 
