ich fall copiously about this season, moisten the
earth and air; and if the plants are young and vigorous, they soon
push out fresh leaves. In a fortnight or three weeks from the time
of the first picking, the shrubs are again covered with fresh
leaves, and are ready for the second gathering, which is the most
important of the season. The third and last gathering, which takes
place as soon as new leaves are formed, produces a very inferior
kind of tea, which is rarely sent out of the district. The mode of
gathering and preparing the leaves of the tea plant is very simple.
We have been so long accustomed to magnify and mystify everything
relating to the Chinese, that in all their arts and manufactures we
expect to find some peculiar practice, when the fact is, that many
operations in China are more simple in their character than in most
parts of the world. To rightly understand the process of rolling and
drying the leaves, which I am about to describe, it must be borne in
mind that the grand object is to expel the moisture, and at the same
time to retain as much as possible of the aromatic and other
desirable secretions of the species. The system adopted to attain
this end is as simple as it is efficacious. In the harvest seasons,
the natives are seen in little family groups on the side of every
hill, when the weather is dry, engaged in gathering tea leaves. They
do not seem so particular as I imagined they would have been in this
operation, but strip the leaves off rapidly and promiscuously, and
throw them all into round baskets, made for the purpose out of split
bamboo or ratan. In the beginning of May, when the principal
gathering takes place, the young seed-vessels are about as large as
peas. These are also stripped off and mixed with the leaves; it is
these seed-vessels which we often see in our tea, and which has some
slight resemblance to capers. When a sufficient quantity of leaves
are gathered, they are carried home to the cottage or barn, where
the operation of drying is performed."

This is minutely described, and the author continues:--

"I have stated that the plants grown in the districts of Chekiang
produce green teas, but it must not be supposed that they are the
green teas which are exported to England. The leaf has a much more
natural color, and has little or none of wh