the leaves and branches of most of the plants, and those now blooming in great beauty and strength are from roots the growth of this summer, I have one green tea-plant the stem and branches of which withstood the frost of February without the slightest protection, and is now a splendid plant, covered with branches and evergreen leaves, affording undeniable evidence not only of its capability of resisting frost, but of its adaptation to just such a degree of temperature.

I have often remarked that the tea-plant requires for its perfection the influence of two separate and distinct climates, the heat of summer and the cold of winter.  The thermometer in this vicinity during the heat of summer generally ranges from 74 at 6 o’clock a.m. to 82 at 3 o’clock p.m., only one day during the summer so high as 86.

    This is a most agreeable temperature, nights always cool, which the
    tea-plant enjoys, and the days hot and fanned with the mountain
    breeze.

The drought I found the most difficult point to contend with, owing to the want of adequate means for irrigation.  I lost 20 or 30 plants through this, and learned that no tea plantation should he established without irrigation.  After two or three years there will be little necessity for it, because the depth of the roots will generally then protect the plant.

    My plantation at Golden Grove is well supplied with water, or I
    should not have purchased it at any price.

    It is the first and most important point to secure a southern or
    western aspect, a gentle declivity the second, salubrious air and
    suitable soil the third.

    Our country is filled with natural tea plantations, which are only
    waiting the hand of the husbandman to be covered with this luxuriant
    and productive plant.

I know the public is naturally impatient of delay.  Like corn, it is expected that the tea-nuts will be planted in the spring, and the crop gathered in the autumn.  But they forget that the tea-plant does not interfere with any other crop, and when once planted it does not soon require a renewal.

I have sometimes felt this impatience myself, and longed for a cup of tea of my own growing, but I have never had one.  As a husbandman, I must wait some time longer, and let patience have her perfect work.”

Again, under date May 1, 1850, he states that he has succeeded admirably in the culture.  The plants bear the winter well, and their physiology and general characteristics remain unchanged by the change of climate and soil.  The leaf puts out at the same period of the year that it does in China.

On the 27th of May, 1850, Dr. Smith received a further batch of trees, fresh, green and healthful, as if still growing in the plantations of China; after a passage of little more than five months.  These plants, together with the seedlings and nuts, were of the green tea species, and obtained from a quarter situated about 700 miles from Canton.