Still the progress of these efforts to grow tea in other countries than China, Japan and India, must necessarily prove interesting as being calculated to make the world more independent of these countries for its supplies. Yet it is an established fact that the finest varieties of tea are best cultivated in the warmer latitudes and on sites most exposed to air and sunshine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III. BOTANICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND FORM. -------------- There are few subjects in the vegetable kingdom that have attracted such a large share of public notice as the tea plant. Much error for a long time existed regarding its botanical classification, owing to the jealousy of the Chinese government preventing foreigners from visiting the districts where tea was cultivated; while the information derived from the Chinese merchants at the shipping ports, scanty as it was, could not be depended on with any certainty. So that before proceeding to discuss the question of the species which yield the teas of commerce it may be well to notice those which are usually described as distinct varieties in systematic works. Tea is differently named in the various provinces of China where it is grown. In some it is called _Tcha_ or _Cha_, in others _Tha_ or _Thea_, in Canton _Tscha_, and finally _Tia_ by the inhabitants of Fo-kien, from whom the first cargoes are said to have been obtained, and so pronounced in their _patois_ as to give rise to the European name TEA. By botanists it is termed _Thea_, this last name being adopted by Linnæus for the sake of its Greek orthography, being exactly that of _Oex_—a goddess—a coincidence doubtless quite acceptable to those who use and enjoy the beverage as it deserves. The species of the genus _Thea_ are few in number, some botanists being of opinion that even these are of a single kind—_Camillia_—and is by them classed as _Thea-Camillia_. Others asserting that no relation whatever exists between these two plants, maintaining that the _Thea_ and _Camillia_ are widely different and of a distinct species. Yet, though the _Camillia_ bears the same name among the Chinese as _Thea_ and possesses many of its structural characteristics, distinctions are made between them by many eminent botanists, who hold that they differ widely and materially and are mostly agreed in the statement that the true Tea-plant is distinguished from the Camillia in having longer, narrower, thinner, more serrated and less shiny leaves, and that a marked difference is also noticeable in the form and contents of the fruit or pod.