nly the three leaves at
the tips. But the pickers mostly take bigger pieces, for the somewhat
higher price given for good picking is not enough to secure three-leaf
stuff only. It is not absolutely necessary, however, that the leaves
gathered should be all of such a choice sort.

Women and girls come from a distance to pick tea. Picking is regarded
as "polite labour by the daughters of the higher middle class of
farmers." It has also the attraction that farmers' sons have a way of
visiting tea gardens in order to "pick up wives." The girls certainly
give would-be husbands every chance of seeing what they can do, for
they are at work for a long day, often of from twelve to fourteen
hours. In such a day it is possible, I was told, to pick 50, 80 or
even 100 lbs. of leaves. One man put the rate as from 50 to 120 pieces
a minute. Four pounds of leaves make a pound of tea.

In one district the first picking may take place during the first
three weeks of May. In colder districts it is proceeding until the end
of the month. The second season is from the end of June until the
beginning of July. The third is in August. The bushes, after producing
their three crops of leaves, bear in November their seeds, which are
about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and are worth about a sen
a pound. Oil is pressed from them.

Good tea depends on climate and soil, careful cutting over and good
manuring. In some places I saw soya bean being grown between the rows
as green manuring. Like so many other crops, tea is or ought to be
sprayed. The northern limit of tea is Niigata, where the bushes must
be protected from the snow, which may fall in that prefecture to a
great depth. The region in which tea cannot be grown is that in which
the temperature falls below zero for two months. Tea is not grown, as
in India and Ceylon, by tea planters, but in small areas and as a
side-line at that. I never saw a plantation of more than five acres.
Most areas are much smaller. The chief reason for this is that tea is
largely manufactured on the day on which it is picked and the capacity
of a farmer's tea manufacturing equipment is limited. In Shidzuoka
nearly a quarter of the tea is hand rolled and three-quarters made by
machinery. Elsewhere in Japan half the crop may be hand rolled.

When leaves are sold to factors the transactions take place in booths
opened by them in the tea districts. It is a busy scene in the region
of the cottage factories. One