The term “chop” in Chinese means contract, and does not, as is claimed, refer to the crop or picking of any particular garden or season. In trade it is applied to a quantity of tea frequently composed of the product of different gardens, or piens (localities) and even districts averaged or made uniform in the piens of the Twa-tu-tia by the factors before forwarding to the shipping ports. When a sufficient quantity of a certain specified grade has been secured from several growers to make up a chop, it is carried to a warehouse in the adjacent village, where it is all mixed together, averaged, refired and packed for the foreign market. The quantity for a chop being selected according to the quality of the leaf and the district producing it, and considering how chops are made up—a few piculs from several gardens, often widely apart, they are wonderfully uniform in grade. Still, although year after year the same “chops” are received from the same shippers, it does not follow that the chops of one year or season will be as fine as those of the preceding or of equal quality. It being by no means an unusual practice for the packers in the interior to leave the chests unmarked until they reach the shipper, who, knowing the chops must be in demand at that particular season in the consuming countries, supplies them to order, or, at least, not to use one of bad repute. The average cost of medium to fine grades of tea is 40 taels (about $20) per picul (133⅓ pounds) laid down at the port of shipment is as follows at the present time: The refiring, packing, leading, chests, matting and rattaning varying from $3 to $4 per picul more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V. CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION. -------------- Tea as it occurs in commerce is the dried leaves of the tea-plant, and is generically classified as Green and Black, under which names it is best known to the public. Commercially, they are classed as China, Japan, India, Ceylon, and Java teas, but are again divided into numerous varieties and grades, having terms derived from the districts and localities of production, or indicative of age, form, or quality, from the delicate product of the young leaf-bud up to that of the large, old, and fully expanded leaf. These numerous appellations which distinguish the commercial qualities of tea being almost entirely of Chinese origin. CHINA TEAS.