the Chinese from foreigners for teas two and three centuries ago
were most exorbitant, and paid the Chinese Government and Chinese
merchants an enormous profit. Quite naturally that sagacious
nation saw the danger of letting the truth concerning the origin,
manufacture and cost of their most precious commodity pass into
the possession of other people, and they strove to prevent
foreigners from penetrating to their inland tea gardens, while
they plied inquisitive enquirers with fairy tales which were
eagerly swallowed. They said that every different kind of tea was
the product of a different species of plant, which bore a
different name, and that the manufacture was a most intricate
process depending upon secrets confined to a very few; that the
leaves could safely be plucked only at certain phases of the
moon, and at certain hours of the day, and that some delicate
varieties of tea leaves were plucked only by young maidens, etc.
They even allowed Europeans to believe that green tea was colored
by salts of copper, on copper plates, having doubtless learned
that their were European merchants who would not be deterred from
vending poisonous foods provided a good fat profit attended the
transaction. In short, they practiced some of the dissimulation
and tricks of trade to which many merchants were addicted.

To particularize further, and yet generalize at the same time, we
will say here that the Tea plant or tree is greatly modified in
hardiness, in height, in size of leaf, and in the quality of the
leaf for a beverage, by soil, by moisture, tillage, and climate.
Some soils and some climates develop a tea plant decidedly more
suitable for a green tea than for a black tea, and vice-versa.
The Formosa Oolong, with its natural flowery fragrance is a
product of a peculiar soil, said to be a clay topped with rich