pt A ne rr TOE a 
a a cha eA Dh are PO i Sane eet siren 
THA. 
the fire and kept during a twelvemonth. All 
the varieties of the tea of commerce are prepared 
for the market by more or less application of 
artificial heat; and some are highly or repeatedly 
torrefied. The bohea derives its name from Vo- 
vyee, the country in which it grows; congo or 
cong-foo, signifying “great trouble,” from the 
operose method in which its leaves are gathered ; 
pekoe or pe-how, signifying “ white leaf,” from 
its consisting only of the leaves of the tenderest 
of the trees of three years’ growth, gathered just 
after they have bloomed ; and souchong or seou- 
chong, signifying “small good thing,” from its 
being the scarce produce of trees of three years’ 
growth on particular kinds of soil. The leaves 
which are gathered earliest in the spring afford 
the strongest and most valuable varieties ; those 
which are gathered late in the year afford the 
inferior varieties; and those of any season can 
be made into the green or hyson varieties by 
peculiar and abundant torrefaction. All the 
leaves naturally possess an unctuous quality ; and 
they lose almost all of it in the process of drying. 
Many adulterations of tea, by admixture of 
the leaves of old stock, of exhausted specimens, 
or of totally different plants, are practised both 
in China and in Britain. The Chinese mix the 
waste unmarketable teas of former years with 
the new crop, in order to increase its bulk, and 
mix other substances with many or most or all 
of the varieties in order to increase their weight, 
to modify their colour, or to give them a peculiar 
flavour; and if they were not checked and con- 
| trolled by searching inspection at Canton, they 
would practise such vast and multifarious decep- 
tion as would speedily throw the whole tea-trade 
into a state of chaos. They systematically use 
the leaves of the Olea fragrans, in particular, for 
imparting a special scent to some varieties, and 
those of the Camellia sasanqua, for modifying the 
appearance and the quality of both good and bad 
varieties, and those of Azalea indica, for pro- 
ducing the small silvery-looking intermixture 
which characterises pekoe. Among the tricks of 
adulteration played at home are the intermixing 
of the scalded and dried leaves of the white- 
thorn and the common ash, and of the re-dried 
waste tea-leaves of hotels and taverns. 
The tea-plant is indigenous in eastern parts of 
China and in Japan, and is held in the highest 
esteem by the natives, both as an article of diet 
and as a means of national wealth. It has been 
used by the Chinese from time immemorial, some 
say from the time of Confucius, as both an in- 
vigorating beverage and a medicinal condiment, 
peculiarly salutary to the human constitution. 
It has for ages been the theme of their poets, the 
idol of their husbandmen, and the highest fa- 
vourite of their emperor and his government; 
and it is discussed at great length, and with re- 
ference to all its history and treatment, in a series 
of twenty-four native treatises which began to 
be composed about the seventh century. The 
407 
consumption of it throughout the vast Chinese 
empire is so great that, in the opinion of Sir 
George Staunton, it would not be materially 
lowered in price to the native consumer if the 
whole trade in it to Europe were abandoned. It 
seems to have been first introduced into Europe, 
about the middle of the 17th century, by the 
Dutch,—and into England from Holland, in 1666, 
by Lords Arlington and Ossay. It was originally 
sold in this country for sixty shillings per pound, 
and was treated as a rare and high and dangerous 
luxury; and though strenuously denounced and 
vigorously opposed, it year after year got into 
increasingly extensive use,—and, at about the 
beginning of the 18th century, it became gene- 
rally established as a culinary necessary of British 
life. It subsequently continued to be a vast and 
rapidly increasing department of the East India 
Company’s imports to Britain; and, in recent 
times, it rose to a great and permanent augmen- 
tation by the opening of the Indo-Chinese ports 
to general commerce. The experimental culti- 
vation of it was tried in Bengal so early as 1793, 
—and on a greater and more vigorous scale in 
1835; the actual and extensive cultivation of it 
has for a considerable period been carried on in 
Assam and Cochin-China,—and promises to ac- 
quire great consequence in several of the Anglo- 
Indian provinces; and the amateur cultivation 
of it in the open ground, with the view of testing 
its possible adaptations to routine culture, has 
been tried in several parts of England, and in 
several countries of Continental Hurope. The 
plant proves quite capable of withstanding the 
winter in the open ground in Britain, with the 
aid of a little protection when young; and it may 
admit of a very easy and extensive naturalization 
throughout the milder regions of Southern Eu- 
rope; nor does it seem to possess any particular 
fastidiousness as to soil or situation or cultorial 
treatment; yet—on the mere ground of the far 
greater cheapness of labour in China than in 
Europe, combined with the fact of the extensive 
hereditary experience which the Chinese possess 
both in the department of cultivating the plant 
and in that of drying and otherwise preparing 
its leaves—it probably can nowhere be so grown 
in Europe as to yield marketable produce at as 
low a price as the tea imported from China. 
Tea is cultivated, not in every part of China, 
but chiefly in a tract on the east side, called the 
tea country, situated Detween the 28th and 35th 
degrees of north latitude, and more particularly 
between the 30th and 33d, and possessing a.mean 
temperature in November of 56° Fahrenheit at 
sunrise and 62° at noon. But in Japan, it is 
cultivated, not in any particular district, or in 
lands specially devoted to it, but in all parts of 
the country, around the border of corn and rice 
fields. 
countries is very much the same. The plant 
The mode of cultivation in the. two 
i] 
thrives best on light stony soil; and is commonly 
sown in the month of February, in rows 4 or 5 | 
