Ceylon began to grow tea on a commercial scale as late as 1875, after her coffee plantations had been ruined by disease. That year her total acreage was about 1,000 acres, In 1883 Ceylon exported a million and a half pounds of tea. In 1897 she had 400,000 acres of growing tea, equal to 625 square miles; and the estimate of Mr. William MacKensie, Tea Commissioner for the Ceylon Government, of her production for 1900, is 135,000,000 lbs. The aggregate exports of tea by India and Ceylon is about 310,000,000 lbs., a complete reversal of conditions of tea trade within twenty years, and due entirely to British enterprise and the fine quality of British grown teas. A liberal estimate for the total exports of Chinese and Japanese teas for 1899 would be 340,000,000 lbs.; so that it is fair to say that the world's consumption of tea, outside of China and Japan, is now equally divided between teas of the latter two countries and those of English growth. CHAPTER IV. Characteristics Of The Tea Plant. Chinese tea plants are usually divided into two classes, and distinguished a Thea Bohea and Thea Viridis, the former being most suitable for black teas, and the latter for green teas; and black and green teas have been indiscriminately made from the leaves of either. A tea shrub of Chinese origin now before us, growing among a host of common American plants, displays no special characteristics which would attract attention to itself. It resembles an orange plant. Its developed leaves are smooth on the surface, leathery in texture, dark green in color, with edges finely serrated from point almost to stalk. They are without odor, and when chewed in the mouth, have a mild and not unpleasant astringency, but no other perceptible flavor. A leaf of any familiar domestic plant, such as the lilac, the plantain, or the apple, has a stronger individuality to the sense of taste, than this green leaf of the tea plant. How was the hidden mystery of its incalculable value to mankind revealed? What premonition guided the Chinese discoverer to the preparatory treatment and delicately graduated firing process which develops tea's precious flavors? And does not this unsolved question suggest the possible existence of other plants, growing, perhaps, at our very doorsteps, possessing rare and unrecognized virtues? In form, tea leaves have been compared by writers to leaves of the privet, the plum, the ash, the willow, but close observers know that not only do leaves of the species just mentioned represent different types, but that important variations in form occur in leaves of the same species, and in leaves growing on a single tree or plant. The tea plant is subject to the same vagaries, and any description by comparison will be misleading. The reader must be content with the typical forms of tea leaves shown in our engravings on the following page, for which we are indebted to the kindness of Mr. Joseph M. Walsh, importer of teas, at Philadelphia.