tory or tea-house.

Plant growth ceases about the end of October. Then cold-weather work
begins, including the great and important operation of pruning, which
requires a large force and will occupy most of the winter. Also
charcoal-burning for next season's supply; road-making, building and
repairing, jungle-cutting, bridge-building, and nursery-making: that is,
preparing with great care beds in which the seed will be planted early
in spring. Cultivation is also, of course, carried on; it can never be
overdone. In the factory, some men are busy putting together or
manufacturing new tea-boxes, lining them carefully with lead, which
needs close attention, as the smallest hole in the lining of a tea-chest
will cause serious injury to the contents.

When spring opens and the first glorious "flush" is on the bushes, there
is a readjustment of labour. Pluckers begin to gather the leaf, and as
the season advances more pluckers are needed, till possibly every man,
woman and child may be called on for this operation alone, it being so
important that the leaf flush does not get ahead and out of control, so
that the leaf would get tough and hard and less fit for manufacture;
but cultivation is almost equally important, and every available
labourer is kept hard at it.

What a pleasure it is to watch a good expert workman, be he carpenter,
bricklayer, ploughman, blacksmith, or only an Irish navvy. In even the
humblest of these callings the evidence of much training, practice or
long apprenticeship is noticeable. To an amateur who has tried such work
himself it will soon be apparent how crude his efforts are, how little
he knows of the apparently simple operation. The navvy seems to work
slowly; but he knows well, because his task is a day-long one, that his
forces must be economised, that over-exertion must be avoided. This
lesson was brought home to me when exasperated by the seeming laziness
of the coolie cultivators, I would seize a man's hoe and fly at the
work, hoe vigorously for perhaps five minutes, swear at the man for his
lack of strenuousness, then retire and find myself puffing and blowing
and almost in a state of collapse.

If an addition or extension is being made to the garden, the already cut
jungle has to be burnt and the ground cleared in early spring, the soil
broken up and staked: that is, small sticks put in regular rows and
intervals to show where the young plants are to be put. Then when the
rains have prop