Such lands are of less value to the zemindars than low rice land, where they can command a good supply of water for irrigation. But I must not be understood to recommend poor worn out hill lands for tea cultivation,--land on which nothing else will grow. Nothing is further from my meaning. Tea in order to be profitable requires a good sound soil,--a light loam, well mixed with sand and vegetable matter, moderately moist, and yet not stagnant or sour. Such a soil, for example, as on these hill sides produces good crops of mundooa, wheat or millet, is well adapted for tea. It is such lands which I have alluded to as abounding in the Himalayas, and which are, at present, of so little value either to the Government, or to the natives themselves. _The system of Irrigation_ applied to tea in India is never practised in China. I did not observe it practised in any of the great tea countries which I visited. On asking the Chinese manufacturers whom I brought round, and who had been born and brought up in these districts, whether they had seen such a practice, they all replied, "_no, that is the way we grow rice: we never irrigate tea_." Indeed, I have no hesitation in saying that, in nine cases out of ten, the effects of irrigation are most injurious. When tea will not grow without irrigation, it is a sure sign that the land employed is not suitable for such a crop. It is no doubt an excellent thing to have a command of water in case of a long drought, when its agency might be useful in saving a crop which would otherwise fail, but irrigation ought to be used only in such emergent cases. I have already observed that good tea land is naturally moist, although not stagnant; and we must bear in mind that the tea shrub is _not a water plant_, but is found in a wild state on the sides of hills. In confirmation of these views, it is only necessary to observe further, that all the _best Himalayan plantations are those to which irrigation has been most sparingly applied_.