TEA GROWING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6297, 23 January 1882, Page 3

TEA GROWING.

TO TIIR KDITOR. BIR, —Some short time since I saw a report in the News about tea plants. I intended at that time to give your readers what little information I possessed, butforgot till to-day, when a gentleman was inquiring of me why his seeds did not come up—some he procured from one of your correspondents. As many others are doubtless in the same fix, I may state that tea seeds"'are never likely to germinate after a short sea voyage unless they have been soyvn in a box of soil and covered with glass. The groat botanist Linnauis proved tiiia upwards of 100 years ago. R<i the plants belonging to the acclimatisation Society. Whether they are the right sort or not, will remain to be proven by the gentleman receiving them from the society ; and us lie lias gained hi.* knowledge of tea cultivation in India amongst the plantations of the Assam variety, according to report, he will probably condemn them as worthless, as the Assam variety in larger and tougher in the leaf tlian this, the tiue Chinese variety, Thai rlritlU, grown by the society. I speak positively, as I recognised it some years back in this society's garden. It is exactly the same sort :is a plant grown outside one of the conservatories at ICew, sent there, as I was told, by Robert Fortune, who first introduced the same variety to India.—l am, &c, J. Mayo, Drury.