In the present state of our knowledge, it is quite impossible to say how many species or varieties of the tea-plant are grown in China. They are now believed to be numerous, although the two kinds to which we have referred are those most extensively cultivated. They have long been allowed to rank as distinct species in botanical books, and grown as such in our greenhouses; but some acute botanists have, at various times, suggested that they might be merely varieties of one plant. Such was the opinion of the editor of the “Botanical Magazine,” when he figured and described the Bohea variety (t. 998). Professor Balfour (“Manual of Botany,” § 793) enumerates three species—the two already mentioned, and one called _Thea Assamica_, being the one chiefly cultivated at the tea-grounds of Assam. Most of our readers may be aware that the cultivation and manufacture of tea has been successfully introduced to Northern India. A “Report on the Government Tea Plantations in Kumaon and Gurwahl, by W. Jameson, Esq., the superintendent of the Botanical Gardens in the North-Western Provinces,”(5) has just reached us. In that report—to which we will have occasion afterward to refer—there are “two species, and two well marked varieties” described. Some of these do not appear to have been at all noticed by other writers, although, from specimens of the plants, which we have examined, from the tea-grounds, they appear sufficiently distinct to warrant their being ranked as separate species; and there are, indeed, some botanists who would at once set them down as such. Having disposed of the question of _species_ in such manner as the unsatisfactory state of botanical knowledge on this point will admit, we shall now proceed to communicate some information respecting the culture of the tea-plant, and the manner in which its leaves are made available for the production of the beverage of which the female portion of the community, and more particularly _old wives_ (of both sexes), are believed to be so remarkably fond.