hree Years' Wanderings
in the Northern Provinces of China_, was deputed by the East India
Company to proceed to China for the purpose of obtaining the finest
varieties of the tea-plant, as well as native manufacturers and
implements, for the government tea-plantations in the Himalaya. Being
acquainted with the Chinese language, and adopting the Chinese
costume, he penetrated into districts unvisited before by
Europeans--excepting, perhaps, the Catholic missionaries--exciting no
further curiosity as to his person or pedigree, than what was due to a
stranger from one of the provinces beyond the great wall. His
principal journeys were to Sung-lo, the great green-tea district, and
to the Bohea Mountains, the great black-tea district; besides a flying
visit to Kingtang, or Silver Island, in the Chusan archipelago. The
narrative, which he has since published,[3] manifests a good faculty
for observation; but travelling as privately as possible, he saw
little but the exterior aspects of the country, the appearance of
which he describes very graphically. As a botanist, he had a keen eye
for everything which promised to enlarge our knowledge of the Chinese
flora, and discovered many useful and ornamental trees and shrubs,
some of which, such as the funereal cypress, will one day produce a
striking and beautiful effect in our English landscape, and in our
cemeteries. Of social and political information relative to the
Celestial Empire, the book is quite barren; and we do not know that
there is anything in it which will be so acceptable to the reader, as
fresh and reliable information about his favourite beverage. To this,
therefore, our attention will be confined.

The plant in cultivation about Canton, from which the Canton teas are
made, is known to botanists as the _Thea bohea_; while the more
northern variety, found in the green-tea country, has been called
_Thea viridis_. The first appears to have been named upon the
supposition, that all the black teas of the Bohea Mountains were
obtained from this species; and the second was called _viridis_,
because it furnished the green teas of commerce. These names seem to
have misled the public; and hence many persons, until a few years ago,
firmly believed that black tea could be made only from _Thea bohea_,
and green tea only from _Thea viridis_. In his _Wanderings in China_,
published in 1846, Mr Fortune had stated that both teas could be made
from either plant, and that the differ