The native Indian tree was, however, not initially utilized upon a commercial scale for tea purposes. The reason for neglecting the native plant we do not find definitely stated, but infer from several sources of information that it is owing to the extreme delicacy of constitution of the Assam plant, its demands for excessive moisture and high temperature, and its preference for partial shade, evidenced by its growing in the jungle and under other trees. Possibly a difficulty in restraining its luxuriant habit of growth was also involved. However this may be, the commercial tea of Ceylon and India was a product of a cultivated cross between the tender native Indian and the hardier Chinese tea plants, in which the Assam strain bears the proportion of one half to two thirds. A more robust plant under cultivation was the result, and one which preserves the best qualities of both varieties. This cross is usually termed a hybrid.

It seems probable that the removal of the tropical Indian plant to China, more than a thousand years ago, with its much colder and dryer climate and its poorer soil--for the best soil of China has been set apart for rice and other indespensable foods--together with continual removal of its leaves, have in time evolved a tea plant so different from its parent stock, that scientists failed for many years to recognize the Indian original. Several times in the early years of 19th century zealous travellers and residents of India sent to England specimens of the native Indian tea plant for scientific examination. But conservative government officials had already established a botanical or technical standard for the tea plant to which every aspirant for relationship must conform; no one of them seems to have thought of the simple test of the teapot. Finally some rash investigator, not having the fear of scientific anathema before his eyes, crudely cured a few leaves, and actually put them in hot water. Tea merchants immediately recognized the plant and the magic circle of the Circumlocution Office was smashed into bits.

Meanwhile, Chinese tea plants and Chinese experts and laborers had been imported into India and tea gardens were well under way before the native tea plant had been recognized. But in the ultra-tropical climate of India, Chinese tea plants languished, and success was finally obtained only by abandoning the stunted Chinese varieties, and getting back nearer to the indigenous Thea Assimica; and by the introduction of modern agricultural methods under British management, and even by the use of machinery for rolling tea and for firing tea by currents of hot air. Indian laborers now supersede the Chinese workmen, who were not found sufficiently pliable in adapting themselves to European ideas.

To preserve the historical record of tea so far as possible, we will state that while the indigenous Indian tea plant had been recognized somewhere about the year 1820, the first serious and sustained attempts to grow tea in India were made by Englishmen, about 1834, using Chinese tea plants and Chinese workmen for the purpose. English authorities differ upon the exact dates. The first shipment of English grown tea from India to London was made in 1838; it amounted to but 60 chests, which brought at auction in London $2.25 a pound. The second shipment in 1839 of ninety five chests brought $2.00 a pound. In 1899 the Indian tea crop amounted to about 175,000,000 lbs., and the size of Indian tea gardens varied from 100 acres or less up to 4,000 acres. In 1897 the total acreage of tea plantations in India was stated by Mr. Crole at 509,500 acres, equal to nearly 800 square miles.

Ceylon began to grow tea on a commercial scale as late as 1875, after her coffee plantations had been ruined by disease. That year her total acreage was about 1,000 acres, In 1883 Ceylon exported a million and a half pounds of tea. In 1897 she had 400,000 acres of growing tea, equal to 625 square miles; and the estimate of Mr. William MacKensie, Tea Commissioner for the Ceylon Government, of her production for 1900, is 135,000,000 lbs.

The aggregate exports of tea by India and Ceylon was about 310,000,000 lbs., a complete reversal of conditions of tea trade within twenty years, and due entirely to British enterprise and the fine quality of British grown teas.

A liberal estimate for the total exports of Chinese and Japanese teas for 1899 would be 340,000,000 lbs.; so that it was fair to say that the world's consumption of tea, outside of China and Japan, was than equally divided between teas of the latter two countries and those of English growth.

Garway's Famous Tea Circular - Garway's Famous Circular was so often quoted and mutilated that we print it here in full; it has no date, but it is supposed to have been printed in 1660.

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