About 50 pounds of a fairly marketable article of American tea has recently been produced by a Mr. Sheppard of Summerfield, S. C., who grew and cured the leaves in an ordinary fruit evaporator. On being tested, the sample was pronounced equal to the average of China Congous and much superior to many of the India, Java and Ceylon growths. With other and more proper methods of curing, the quality and character could undoubtedly be much improved. Much more evidence could be selected as to the quality of tea produced by ordinary domestic processes, but it is sufficiently well ascertained that it is within the capacity of hundreds of thousands of people in this country to grow and prepare all the tea they require, leaving the question of its profitable commercial culture to be settled by practical test later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s Notes Note: New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Note: Archaic spellings of various words have been retained, as well as apparently unique non-standard spellings that the author uses consistently. Printer’s errors and apparent misspellings have been changed and are noted below. Note: Hyphenation and capitalization have been standardized in cases noted below where there is a predominant form in the text, but otherwise left alone. Pg. 13: Corrected typo: ‘Erythræn’ to ‘Erythræan’ Pg. 24: Hyphenation consistency: ‘Foo-chow’ to ‘Foochow’ - Unhyphenated in large majority of cases Pg. 30: Hyphenation consistency: ‘Kiu-siu’ to ‘Kiusiu’ - Unhyphenated elsewhere Pg. 30: Corrected typo: ‘Buitzenorg’ to ‘Buitenzorg’ - Corrected city name Pg. 31: Proper name consistency: ‘Neilghery’ to ‘Neilgherry’ - Neilgherry elsewhere Pg. 34: Corrected typo: ‘provice’ to ‘province’ - Context: “... in the adjoining province ...” Pg. 37: Capitalization consistency: ‘cha’ to ‘Cha’ - List of names of tea, mostly capitalized Pg. 37: Capitalization consistency: ‘it is termed thea’ to ‘it is termed Thea’ - Capitalized elsewhere Pg. 39: Proper name consistency: ‘Thea viridis’ to ‘Thea Viridis’ - Capitalized elsewhere Pg. 39: Proper name consistency: ‘Thea bohea’ to ‘Thea Bohea’ - Capitalized elsewhere Pg. 40: Proper name consistency: ‘Thea viridis’ to ‘Thea Viridis’ - Capitalized elsewhere Pg. 40: Proper name consistency: ‘Thea bohea’ to ‘Thea Bohea’ - Capitalized elsewhere Pg. 40: Proper name consistency: ‘Twankey’ to ‘Twankay’ - Standardized spelling in caption Pg. 43: Capitalization consistency: ‘Che-Kiang’ to ‘Che-kiang’ - Latter part uncapitalized elsewhere Pg. 44: Corrected punctuation: ‘Souchong-Congou.’ to ‘Souchong-Congou.’ - Replaced comma with period in illustration text Pg. 45: Corrected punctuation: ‘.’ to ‘,’ - “... classed as Thea Cochinchinensis, found ...” Pg. 46: Corrected typo: ‘panacæ’ to ‘panacæa’