These accounts connected with the first discovery of the Tea plant in China are purely fabulous, and it is not until we come down to the fourth century of the Christian era that we can trace any positive allusion to it by a Chinese writer. But, as the early history of nearly every other ancient discovery is more or less vitiated by fable, we ought not to be any more fastidious or less indulgent towards the marvelous in the discovery of Tea than we are towards that of fire, iron, glass or coffee. The main facts may be true, though the details be incorrect; and, though the accidental discovery of fire may not have been made by Suy-Jin in the manner claimed, yet it probably was communicated originally by the friction of two sticks. Nor may it be strictly correct to state that Fuh-he made the accidental discovery of iron by the burning of wood on brown earth any more than the Phœnicians discovered the making of glass by burning green wood on sand, yet it is not improbable that some such accidental processes first led to these discoveries. Thus, also, considerable allowances are to be deducted from the scientific discoveries of Chin-Nung in botany, when we read of his having, in one day, discovered no less than seventy different species of plants that were poisonous and seventy others that were antidotes against their baneful effects. According to some Chinese authorities, the Tea plant was first introduced into their country from Corea as late as the fourth century of the present era, from whence it is said to have been carried to Japan in the ninth. Others again maintaining that it is undoubtedly indigenous to China, being originally discovered on the hills of those provinces, where it now grows so abundantly, no date, however, being named. While the Japanese, to whom the plant is as valuable as it is to the Chinese, state that both countries obtained it simultaneously from Corea, about A. D. 828. This latter claim not being sustained by any proof whatever—Von Siebold, to the contrary—who, relying on the statements of certain Japanese writers to this effect, argues in support of their assertions, the improbability of which is unconsciously admitted by Von Siebold himself when he observes “that in the southern provinces of Japan the tea plant is abundant on the plains, but as the traveler advances towards the mountains it disappears,” hence inferring that it is an exotic. The converse of this theory holding good of China, a like inference tends to but confirm their claim that with them the plant is indigenous. That the Japanese did not originally obtain the plant from Corea but from China is abundantly proven by the Japanese themselves, many of whom admit that it was first introduced to their country from China about the middle of the ninth century. In support of this acknowledgment it is interesting to note, as confirming the Chinese origin of tea, that there is still standing at Uji, not far from Osaka,