Ceylon eventually began its career as a tea-growing country under the most favorable circumstances; all the mythical hallucinations about tea cultivation having been removed, the disastrous experience of India saving Ceylon from falling into any serious error at the outset. Several India planters settled on the island, bringing with them a knowledge of its proper cultivation and preparation, so that when these facts are taken into consideration, the success which has attended its cultivation in Ceylon is not so much to be wondered at. The island also possessed other advantages over India in that it suffers less from drought, the rains are more regular and equable, there being scarcely a month in the year without at least some rain, and apart from the adaptability of its soil and climate, it has cheaper labor and superior facilities for forwarding the tea to the shipping ports, all important factors in its cultivation for profit. The tea-producing districts of the island are very compact, having Kandy as its chief centre and extending well into the southwestern provinces touching the coast toward the west. The southwestern section of the island is considered a perfect tea-growing district, soil is good, the climate hot and moist, and the plant can be cultivated at almost any elevation, several plantations there being situated as high as 6,000 feet above sea-level. But although the crops are fairly healthy at this altitude, it is admitted that the plantations lower down are best adapted for the production of the finer grades. The first successful garden was established in 1870 in the now celebrated Loocandura estate, with plants brought from Calcutta, and coolies skilled in its cultivation and manipulation. Tea of particularly good quality was produced from the beginning, samples of which were sent to London and highly spoken of by dealers there. Since that time tea cultivation in Ceylon has made steady progress if not rapid strides. The plant chiefly grown in Ceylon is a hybrid—the _Manipur_ or indigenous tea of Manipari (India)—is also extensively planted there, being equally hardy and suitable to the soil of the island, which is of a light, sandy nature, thickly intermixed with iron-sandstone, this mineral being peculiarly attractive to the tea-plant. The methods of cultivation and preparation are similar in every respect to those in vogue in India. The land is carefully drained and weeded, the trees are not allowed to grow too high, being reduced to a bushy form and picked when they are from two to three years old, according to site and elevation, and the tea prepared from the tender shoots only, caution being exercised not to injure the plants or future flushes checked.