The shrubs are planted in rows three or four feet apart and look like a field of currant or gooseberry bushes; at the end of the third year the bushes become large enough to allow of the first picking and in the eighth year the plant is cut down, when new shoots spring up from the old roots. In Ceylon and parts of India the first picking is in March and there may be as many as 25 pickings in the season until October; in China the first picking is in April, and in Japan late in April or early May. The early pickings make the finest quality of tea, and the very late leaves are not usually exported at all, but are used by the peasants locally. In preparation for commerce the leaves are subjected to various processes of drying, rolling and roasting, into which it would not be necessary at any length to enter; the essential point to remember is that black tea differs from green in that after a short preliminary rolling and roasting, the leaves are exposed to the air in a soft moist state, when they undergo fermentation with the result it is said that a portion of the tannic acid is converted to sugar. Robert Fortune,[1] an authority on the cultivation of the tea plant thought that the differences of manufacture “fully account for the difference in colour, as well as for the effect produced on some constitutions by green tea, such as nervous irritability, sleeplessness, &c.” When we come to look into the early origin of the practice of tea-drinking we find that the subject is shrouded in the mists of antiquity. There are many legendary stories of the discovery and use of tea by the Chinese, but the only authentic and well-attested accounts were given by two Mahommedans who travelled in India and China in the ninth century. The original manuscript was found in the Comte de Seignelay’s library by Eusebius Renaudot and published in 1733. There is plain internal evidence that the manuscript was written about 1173, for there are observations upon the extent and circumference of the walls and towers of Damascus and other cities in subjection to the Sultan Nuroddin, who is spoken of as living at that time. This prince died in 1173 which fixes the date of the narrative before that time. The account speaks of the Arab merchants having been present in China in the years 851 and 867 respectively. On page 25 occurs the following important passage “The Emperor also reserves to himself the revenues which arise from the salt mines and from a certain Herb which they drink with hot water, and of which great quantities are sold in all the cities, to the amount of great sums. They call it _sah_ and it is a shrub more bushy than the pomegranate tree and of a more taking smell, but it has a kind of bitterness with it. Their way is to boil water, which they pour upon this leaf, and this drink cures all sorts of diseases; whatever sums are lodged in the treasury arise from the Poll-tax, and the duties upon salt, and upon this leaf.”[2]