Tea Cultivation in India

Abstract

THE subject of tea cultivation in India is one to which innumerable writers have devoted their attention, and not the least valuable portion of Dr. Feistmantel's work, “Die Theekultur in Britisch-Ost-Indien,” is the bibliography of the subject with which, while recording his indebtedness for much of his information to many of the English and German authors enumerated, he commences his remarks. In his preface he explains that in the course of an address on the products and exports of British India, recently delivered by him in Prague, he alluded to the fact that on the Continent of Europe tea was generally known only as either Russian or Chinese, and that it was barely known that India produced a large and annually increasing quantity of high-class teas, which are largely used in London for mixing with and improving China tea. The correspondence which ensued when these remarks were reported by the local press induced him to publish the present work as the result of information he had the opportunity of collecting while serving in India for eight years as palæontologist to the Geological Survey. Die Theekultur in Britisch-Ost-Indien, im fünfzigsten Jahre ihres Bestandes Historisch, Naturwissenschaftlich, und Statistisch. Dr. Ottokar Feistmantel. (Prague: O. Beyer, 1888.)