(3) "Dragon's Pool," secured through the kindly offices of the United States Department of State and the Chinese government from a celebrated garden in China, the product of which commands a price prohibitive of exportation, except perhaps to Russia. The plants are dwarfish and the leaf small. It is made into green tea both here and in China, yielding a most delicate beverage both to the smell and to the taste, and requiring for the most fas tidious neither cream nor sugar.
(4) Among the varieties exciting the most in terest is the " Shelter " tea, so called because it is grown under matting which excludes the direct sunlight. It is produced elsewhere only in Japan, where it is called " sugar " tea, because of its slightly sweet taste. This saccharine character is due to the storing up in the leaves of large quanti ties of starch, which in the process of manufacture is converted into sugar. The sheltered foliage is blue and large. The leaves are very soft and silky. This tea commands a very high price in Japan, if sold at all. The best of it is reserved for the imperial court.
(5) The gardens of Japanese and Kangra (British India) sorts afford most excellent green teas. Those made at Pinehurst from the former have been pro nounced by the ablest tea-tasters of this country as not surpassed in their cup qualities by any imported from Japan; and a very prominent tea-planter from Kangra valley has recently tasted tea grown at Pinehurst from seed supplied by him, and has stated that it was fully the equal of the best in its original home.
The gardens raised from seed secured from the highest altitudes of Ceylon have not developed sufficiently to warrant an opinion as to their adapt ability to this climate, but they have yielded a strong, flavo-y tea without astringent effect. The climates of Assam and the lower levels of Ceylon are too tropical for the production of tea seed suitable for this section.
Great difficulty has been experienced in the attempt to establish gardens from Formosa seed. The very limited number of plants raised must defer any definite opinion as to their utility here. It is now asserted that the best Formosan tea is derived from plants propagated by layers.
If it be remembered that green tea is non-oxi dized, and black tea is oxidized, it will readily be seen that those leaves which are less sus ceptible to oxidation are better adapted for the production of the former sort ; and as the ordinary curing of tea involves the exposure of the leaf fir a greater or less time to the atmosphere, whereby some oxidation is liable to occur, an in herent proneness to this chemical change renders the making of green tea difficult. The black teas
come chiefly from warmer climates, the greens from cooler climates. Either sort may be made from all tea-leaf, but each variety is better adapted for the production of the one or the other, or one of the numerous intermediate kinds of commercial tea.
Relative values of different parts of the tea plant.
The names and average weight of the leaves and stem on a young tea shoot, freshly plucked, are given below, beginning at its apex. (" Pekoe" in Chinese means "white hairs," referring to the appearance of the folded tip when dry.): It appears that the orange pekoe weighs twice as much as the tip ; the pekoe leaf almost twice as much as the tip and orange pekoe; the first souchong (corruption of Chinese for small or scarce sort) more than all the pekoes together ; the second souchong almost as much as every leaf above it, and the congons (corruption of Chinese for labor in rolling) are each as heavy as the second souchong. It takes 50,000 pekoe tips to make a pound of dry tea, but less than 4,000 of second souchong or congon leaves. Therefore the estimates of the yield of an acre of tea depend to a considerable degree on the method of plucking, whether fine or coarse. Those before given, as the productiveness of the Pinehurst gardens, are the result of fine plucking, whereby only the pekoe tip and leaves, and very rarely the first souchong, are gathered. A leaf or two more from each stem should greatly enhance the size of the crop, but would materially reduce the quality.
The constituent principles which give intrinsic value to tea are contained in cells which have to be broken that they may be taken into solution by the hot water poured on the dried leaf. These cells yield to slight pressure in the young and tender leaf, but are so securely enveloped in the older leaf that they require severe rolling. Again, by the economy of nature the most valuable substances are being constantly withdrawn from the older tissue, to be deposited in parts that are younger and in more rapid growth and replaced by more common and abundant material. The newer, smaller leaf consequently contains more that is valuable and in a much more accessible form. Thus the teas made from the pekoe leaf are more valuable than those from souchong, and the latter than from congon.