whole atmosphere surrounding the issues involved changed! In that instant, with the rapidity of thought, the Colonies vanished and America arose!_ When the news of these proceedings reached England, it provoked a storm of anger, not only among the adherents of the government, but also among the mercantile and manufacturing classes, they having suffered heavy losses by the stoppage of trade with America. The commercial importance and parliamentary influence of the East India Company swelled the outcry of indignation against which they termed the outrage of destroying its property. All united in the resolve to punish the conduct of Boston for its rejection of the least onerous one of an import duty on tea. What followed has been told in song and story—Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge and Yorktown. A new nation sprang into existence, taking its stand upon the pedestal of “EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL,” under a new government “OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. -------------- Besides the character of the different varieties of tea and other information connected with the plant and its product, we have to notice the different parts of the world in which it is now or may be grown in the future, as many practical questions of considerable importance are dependent on the subject. For upwards of two centuries and a half the world’s supply of tea was furnished exclusively by China, and it was not until well into the middle of the nineteenth century that China and Japan were the only two tea-producing countries in the world, their product reaching the western markets through the narrowest channels and under the most oppressive restrictions. Its cultivation however, has in that time been extended to other countries, most notably into Java, India and Ceylon. Tea is more or less cultivated for local consumption in all the provinces of China, except the extreme northern. But to what exact degree of latitude it is difficult to be precise, as we are without definite information from those regions, and the vast empire of China not being sufficiently explored by botanists to warrant the assertion that the plant is not to be found in other parts of the country, at least in a wild state. So far, however, it has not been discovered there, except in a state of cultivation, or as having evidently escaped from cultivation on roadsides or other out-of-the-way places.