About four years ago, Mr Fortune, author of _Three Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China_, was deputed by the East India Company to proceed to China for the purpose of obtaining the finest varieties of the tea-plant, as well as native manufacturers and implements, for the government tea-plantations in the Himalaya. Being acquainted with the Chinese language, and adopting the Chinese costume, he penetrated into districts unvisited before by Europeans--excepting, perhaps, the Catholic missionaries--exciting no further curiosity as to his person or pedigree, than what was due to a stranger from one of the provinces beyond the great wall. His principal journeys were to Sung-lo, the great green-tea district, and to the Bohea Mountains, the great black-tea district; besides a flying visit to Kingtang, or Silver Island, in the Chusan archipelago. The narrative, which he has since published,[3] manifests a good faculty for observation; but travelling as privately as possible, he saw little but the exterior aspects of the country, the appearance of which he describes very graphically. As a botanist, he had a keen eye for everything which promised to enlarge our knowledge of the Chinese flora, and discovered many useful and ornamental trees and shrubs, some of which, such as the funereal cypress, will one day produce a striking and beautiful effect in our English landscape, and in our cemeteries. Of social and political information relative to the Celestial Empire, the book is quite barren; and we do not know that there is anything in it which will be so acceptable to the reader, as fresh and reliable information about his favourite beverage. To this, therefore, our attention will be confined.