The author of an anonymous tract printed in 1689, and obtainable gratis 'up one pair of stairs at the sign of the Anodyne Necklace, without Temple Bar,' rather anticipated events in describing tea to be the leaf of a little shrub growing plentifully in the East Indies. No Indian tea found its way to Europe at that time, when haters of innovation were beginning to complain that through drinking of tea Englishwomen were no longer equal to eating beef of a morning. It was not until 1823 that a Scotsman, bearing the historical name of Robert Bruce, discovered there were tea-drinkers in Assam, who brewed their beloved beverage from the leaves of a native tree growing to a height of forty and even sixty feet; of which a few plants and seeds were subsequently carried by his brother, Mr C. A. Bruce, to Calcutta, to excite a transient curiosity, and that was all.

Time, however, brought Mr C. A. Bruce his reward. In 1834 a committee was appointed to consider the question of introducing tea cultivation in British India, and a scientific party under Dr Nathaniel Wallich—a Danish gentleman, whose botanical industry had won him the post of Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens at Calcutta—was sent to explore the newly acquired province of Assam, and make special inquiry respecting the tea-growing there practised. The result was that the committee reported favourably as to the feasibility of cultivating tea in John Company's dominions, Mr Bruce being selected to superintend the formation of government nurseries; and with the aid of Chinese seeds, Chinese plants, and Chinese cultivators, he set the possibility of producing good tea in India beyond all doubt. One consequence of the happy experiment was the establishment in 1839 of the Assam Tea Company, which took over the greater portion of the government gardens, started new ones on a larger scale, set about the cultivation of tea in good earnest, and after various vicissitudes, is now a flourishing concern.

The profitable industry is now fairly established in several of the provinces of the Indian empire, but Assam still maintains its pride of place, being credited with one half of the tea produced; the tea districts of Cochin and Tibet supplying twenty-six per cent., Darjeeling thirteen per cent., the Himalayan districts six per cent., and British Burmah the remaining five per cent. Darjeeling prides itself upon the superior delicacy and aroma of its leaf; but the rough, pungent, malty flavoured product of Assam, which owes its character to the use of native in place of Chinese seed, is the recognised standard Indian tea. If the Assam planters may congratulate themselves upon overcoming the old-time prejudice in favour of Chinese seed, they have equally good reason to rejoice at having found a way to dispense with Chinese labour, once a grievous necessity. By offering high wages and constant employment, they are able to tempt Bengalese coolies to leave their beloved villages, and by providing comfortable huts with garden-ground in which they can install their wives and families, insure their staying in their new home. That they may not be saddled with useless hands, the tea-growers employ native foremen familiar with the work to act as recruiting officers.

Twelve or thirteen years ago a violent tea-growing mania suddenly set in. Companies were formed by the dozen. The value of available land rose beyond all reason. Some unscrupulous schemers sold uncleared forest-lands as plantations; others, more unscrupulous still, obtained payment for plantations utterly non-existent in any shape, and genuine 'gardens' of forty acres fetched from twenty to thirty thousand pounds. Things have long since found their level again; but the possession of a tea-garden even now presupposes the possession of a capital of at least three thousand pounds, a smaller sum being deemed insufficient to start with, since no return is to be expected from a new plantation for the first three years, and it takes six years for the plants to attain maturity; then they will allow of eight or nine gatherings being made in a year, and yield four hundred pounds of leaves per acre. They improve with age; but planters of seedlings have little chance of seeing their trees at their best, if the Chinese and Japanese speak truly when they say the tea-tree lives to be five hundred years old, and grows better as it grows older.

For very many years after its introduction into England, tea was the subject of a double monopoly. The Chinese were the only manufacturers, the East India Company the only importers. The opening of the trade deprived the consumer of the benefit of the strict supervision exercised by the Company's agents, and left the Chinese merchants master of the situation. A deterioration in the quality of the teas sent into the English market quickly followed; and every reduction in the duty tended to the same end, by encouraging the importation of low-priced leaf of little use save to mix with that of better class; and so it is almost impossible to obtain at any price what those who can remember it call 'old-fashioned tea.' At a late meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, Mr Burrell, after remarking that India produced tea superior to any in the world in flavour, strength, and purity, complained that it was rarely used in this country except to mix with the inferior growth of China; and urged his hearers in their own interests and as a duty they owed to their countrymen in India, who had long toiled and struggled to meet their wants, to a more direct and extended use of Indian tea, and thereby afford a fair harvest of profit to its cultivators, for which nothing was now wanting but an increased consumption of their produce in this country.

Mr Burrell, we think, should rather have appealed to the sellers of tea; for unless they bestir themselves in the matter, but few of the millions of British tea-drinkers can have the chance of tasting pure Indian tea. We are aware that 'the trade' declare pure Indian teas unsuited to the national palate; but we have no faith in their judgment. If dealers in adulterable articles are to be believed, the British public's taste is a monstrously depraved one, preferring chicory to coffee, publican's to brewer's beer, turmeric and flour to mustard, and clever concoctions of all kinds to the things they pretend to be. It may be taken for granted that the Yankee vender of wooden nutmegs was ready to swear his customers preferred the ingenious imitation to the genuine article.

The tea-growers of India, however, have a hopeful prospect before them. The consumption of the produce of their gardens has risen prodigiously, since the arrival of eight chests of tea from Assam caused such a sensation in the London market that the importers obtained from sixteen to thirty-four shillings a pound for it, or an average per pound of twenty-four shillings and sixpence. In 1851 the exportation of Indian tea amounted to 262,839 pounds; by 1863 it had risen to two and a half million pounds; in 1876 English buyers were found for 28,126,100 pounds. Every year sees an increase in the consumption of Indian tea; and unless their Chinese competitors look to it, they will gradually be beaten out of the field, for India possesses vast reserves of land fit for conversion into tea-gardens, and could, if need be, supply the wants of the whole world.