accidentally dropped into the campfire cauldron of a Chinese emperor- aesthete. Early Chinese texts are sometimes vague about the identity of medicinal plants, but it is clear that by the time of Confucius (around 500 B.C.) tea was a well-known drink. During the Tang dynasty (618-907), tea leaves were treated with smoke and compressed into a semimoist cake, slices of which would subsequently be boiled to produce a beverage--a method that was perpetuated for many centuries in Russia. The Chinese spiced this boiled tea with salt, a holdover from even earlier times when a variety of unexpected condiments were added, including orange peel, ginger, and onions. The refined courtiers of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) apparently found brick tea out of keeping with their delicate tastes, for they replaced it with a drink in which finely ground tea leaves were blended with boiling water directly in the cup. Whipped with a bamboo whisk, this mixture superficially resembled shaving lather in texture, although the color could be a fine jade green if fresh leaves were used. (This green powdered tea was the drink one day to become enshrined in the Zen tea ceremony.) The Chinese chronicle of tea ends with the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), which saw the rise of the familiar steeping process, now the commonly accepted practice worldwide. Our ignorance of the earlier methods of tea preparation may be attributed to the West's discovery of China after the older methods had been discarded. Unlike its misty origins in China, the use of tea in Japan is well authenticated. In the year 792 the Japanese emperor surprised the court by holding a large tea party at which Buddhist monks and other notables were invited to sample a curious beverage discovered by his emissaries to the T'ang court. Tea drinking soon became a fashionable pastime, occupying a position comparable to taking coffee in eighteenth-century Europe, but tea remained an expensive import and little thought was given to cultivation in Japan. This changed early in the ninth century when tea drinking came to be associated with the new Buddhist sects of Tendai and Shingon. Under the supervision of the court, tea growing was begun near Kyoto, where the emperor blessed the bushes with a special _sutra_ in the spring and autumn. Tea remained an aristocratic habit for several centuries thereafter and did not become really popular until the late twelfth century, when the famous Zen teacher Eisai "reintroduced" the beverage upon his return from China. Eisai also brought back new seeds for planting, the progeny of which are still growing.