"The rain is passed, the utmost leaflets show their greenish veins; Pull down a branch, and the fragrant scent is diffused around. Both high and low, the yellow golden threads are now quite culled; And my clothes and frock are dyed with odors through and through. "The sweet and fragrant perfumes like that from the Aglaia; In goodness and appearance my tea'll be the best in Wuyen, When all are picked, the new buds by next term will again burst forth, And this morning, the last third gathered is quite done. "Each picking is with toilsome labor, but yet I shun it not, My maiden curls are all askew, my pearly fingers all be numbed; But I only wish our tea to be of a superfine kind, To have it equal their 'dragon's pellet,' and his 'sparrow's tongue.' "For a whole month, where can I catch a single leisure day? For at earliest dawn I go to pick, and not till dusk return; Then the deep midnight sees me still before the firing pan-- Will not labor like this my pearly complexion deface? "But if my face is thin, my mind is firmly fixed So to fire my golden buds that they shall excel all beside, But how know I, who'll put them in jewelled cup? Whose taper fingers will leisurely give them to the maid to draw?" Men, women and children are in China employed for picking tea, and three crops are gathered in favorable seasons, with occasionally a fourth picking. Under the stimulus of East Indian heat and moisture, the "flushes," or new growth of shoots, buds and leaves, are renewed as often as once in a week or ten days; so that during a season of nine months, from a dozen, to a maximum of thirty pickings are made. The same conditions apply to the tea plantations of Java. After ten or twelve years the bushes decline in vigor from the strain of constant loss of young growth, and are replaced by new plants. Thirty pounds of green leaves are an average day's work for women and children. The yield of green leaves or of cured dry tea from a single bush is necessarily variable with its age, size and condition. In China, the proportion of manufactured tea to the green leaves is one to three, or one to three and one-third, while in the East Indies and Java the allowance is one to four. Statistics gathered from India tea planters give us the following figures, for different districts and years: YIELD OF DRY TEA PER ACRE, PER ANNUM. Pounds.............. 370 333 330 246 562 YIELD OF DRY TEA PER BUSH, PER ANNUM. Ounces.............. 1.18 1.46 1.44 1.08 2.50 Mr. Owen A. Gill, of Messrs, Martin Gillett & Co., Baltimore, in 1891, estimated the yield of Indian tea plantations at 400 pounds per acre per annum, costing at that time in India, ready for shipment, say, ten cents a pound; to which must be added, freight, selling charges, etc., of at least four cents a pound.