Chapter I: Preface: TO

THE FIRST EDITION.

The following Essay was written with, _firstly_, the object of competing for the Gold Medal and the Money Prize offered by the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India for the best treatise on the cultivation and manufacture of Tea; and, _secondly_, with the view of arranging the hundreds of notes on these subjects, which, in the course of eleven years, I had collected.

During all these years I have been a Tea planter, making first for myself and others a garden in the Himalayas, and for the last six years doing the same thing for myself in the Chittagong district.

Whenever I have visited other plantations (and I have seen a great number in many districts), I have brought away notes of all I saw. Up to the last, at every such visit, I have learnt _something_--if rarely nothing to follow, something at least to avoid. I have now tested all and everything connected with the cultivation and manufacture of Tea by my own experience, and I can only hope that what I have written will be found useful to an industry destined yet, I believe, in spite of the late panic--the natural result of wild speculation--to play an important part in India.

I have endeavoured to adapt this Essay to the wants of a beginner, as there are many of that class now, and may yet be more in days to come, who must feel, as I often have, the want of a really practical work on Tea.

To those who have Tea properties in unlikely climates and unlikely sites, I would say two words. No view I have taken of the advantages of different localities _can_ in any way affect the results of enterprises already entered upon. But if the note of warning, sounded in the following pages, checks further losses in Tea, already so vast, while it fosters the cultivation on remunerative sites, I shall not have written in vain.

EDWARD MONEY.

SUNGOO RIVER PLANTATION,
CHITTAGONG,
_November, 1870_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. PAST AND PRESENT FINANCIAL PROSPECT OF TEA 1
II. LABOUR, LOCAL AND IMPORTED 10
III. TEA DISTRICTS AND THEIR COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES.
CLIMATE, SOIL, &C., IN EACH 13
IV. SOIL 31
V. NATURE OF JUNGLE 34
VI. WATER AND SANITATION 35
VII. LAY OF LAND 37
VIII. LAYING OUT A GARDEN 42
IX. VARIETIES OF THE TEA PLANT 47
X. TEA SEED 54
XI. COMPARISON BETWEEN SOWING IN NURSERIES AND IN SITU 57
XII. SOWING SEED IN SITU, ID EST, AT STAKE 59
XIII. NURSERIES 62
XIV. MANURE 67
XV. DISTANCES APART TO PLANT TEA-BUSHES 71
XVI. MAKING A GARDEN 73
XVII. TRANSPLANTING 76
XVIII. CULTIVATION OF MADE GARDENS 81
XIX. PRUNING 86
XX. WHITE ANTS, CRICKETS, AND BLIGHT 89
XXI. FILLING UP VACANCIES 92
XXII. FLUSHING AND NUMBER OF FLUSHES 97
XXIII. LEAF-PICKING 102
XXIV. MANUFACTURE. MECHANICAL CONTRIVANCES 109
XXV. SIFTING AND SORTING 134
XXVI. BOXES. PACKING 147
XXVII. MANAGEMENT, ACCOUNTS, FORMS 152
XXVIII. COST OF MANUFACTURE, PACKING, TRANSPORT, &C. 160
XXIX. COST OF MAKING A 300-ACRE TEA GARDEN 163
XXX. HOW MUCH PROFIT TEA CAN GIVE 168
XXXI. THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF INDIAN TEA 174
XXXII. COUNTRIES OUTSIDE CHINA AND INDIA THAT PRODUCE TEA 183
XXXIII. STATISTICS REGARDING INDIAN TEA 194
XXXIV. MARKETS OUTSIDE GREAT BRITAIN 207
XXXV. MAKING INDIAN TEA KNOWN IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 218
XXXVI. TEA MACHINERY 222
XXXVII. WEIGHING AND BULKING OF INDIAN TEAS AT CUSTOM HOUSE 272

ADDENDA TO THIRD EDITION 293

INDEX 299

PRIZE ESSAY

ON THE

CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE

OF TEA IN INDIA.

_PREMIUM, THREE HUNDRED RUPEES AND THE GRANT GOLD MEDAL._