ring the leaves, have always been
objects of peculiar interest. The jealousy of the Chinese government
in former times, prevented foreigners from visiting any of the
districts where tea is cultivated; and the information derived from
the Chinese merchants, even scanty as it was, was not to be depended
upon. And hence we find our English authors contradicting each
other; some asserting that the black and green teas are produced by
the same variety, and that the difference in colour is the result of
a different mode of preparation; while others say that the black
teas are produced from the plant called by botanists _Thea Bohea_,
and the green from _Thea viridis_, both of which we have had for
many years in our gardens in England. During my travels in China
since the last war, I have had frequent opportunities of inspecting
some extensive tea districts in the black and green tea countries of
Canton, Fokien, and Chekiang: the result of these observations is
now laid before the reader. It will prove that even those who have
had the best means of judging have been deceived, and that the
greater part of the black and green teas which are brought yearly
from China to Europe and America are obtained from the same species
or variety, namely, from the _Thea viridis_. Dried specimens of this
plant were prepared in the districts I have named, by myself, and
are now in the herbarium of the Horticultural Society of London, so
that there can be no longer any doubt upon the subject. In various
parts of the Canton provinces where I have had an opportunity of
seeing tea cultivated, the species proved to be the _Thea Bohea_, or
what is commonly called the black tea plant. In the green tea
districts of the north--I allude more particularly to the province
of Chekiang--I never met with a single plant of this species, which
is so common in the fields and gardens near Canton. All the plants
in the green tea country near Ningpo, on the islands of the Chusan
Archipelago, and in every part of the province which I have had an
opportunity of visiting, proved, without an exception, to be _Thea
viridis_. Two hundred miles further to the north-west, in the
province of Kiangnan, and only a short distance from the tea hills
in that quarter, I also found in gardens the same species of tea.
Thus far my actual observatio