The ordinary size of a good full-grown Tea plant, at the end of the season, is, say, 3-1/2 or 4 feet high, and 5 feet diameter. It is pruned down, say, to a height of 2 feet, with a diameter of 3 feet. It is then little more than wooden stems and branches, and to anyone ignorant of the _modus operandi_ in Tea gardens, it would appear as if a plantation so pruned has been ruined. The tree remains so during all its hybernating period, that is, during the time it is resting and the sap is down (this period is longer or shorter, as the climate is a warm or cold one, and it is always during the coldest season), but on the return of spring new shoots start out from the woody stems and branches in the following way:--At the axis or base of each leaf is a bud, the germ of future branches, these develop little by little, until a new shoot is formed of, say, five or six leaves, with a closed bud at top. Then if it be not picked the said bud at top hardens. At the axis or base of each of the said five or six leaves are other buds, and the next step is for one, two, or three of these to develop in the same way and form new shoots. The original shoot grows thicker and higher until it becomes a wooden branch or stem. The same process, in their turn, is repeated with the new shoots. A diagram (see next page) will make my meaning clear. We here have a shoot fully developed, of six leaves, counting the close leaf _a_ at top as one, viz., the leaves _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_. The shoot has started and developed from what was originally a bud at _K_, at the axis or base of the leaf _H_. In the same way as formerly at _K_ a bud existed, which has now formed the complete shoot or flush _K a_, so at the base of the leaves _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_, exist buds 1, 2, 3, 4, from which later new shoots would spring. These again would all have buds at the base of the leaves, destined to form further shoots, which again would be the parents of others, and so on to the end of the season, or until the tree is pruned. [Illustration] It will readily be seen the increase is tremendous. It is only limited by the power of the soil to fling out new shoots, and the _necessities_ of the plant, for, as I have explained, when as much foliage exists as the plant requires, but few new shoots are produced.