of Paorie, Kunour, Lohba, Almorah, Kutoor, and Bheemtal, and I was informed by Mr. Batten, that there are large tracts about Gungoli and various other places equally suitable.  Much of this land is out of cultivation, as I have already stated, while the cultivated portions yield on an average only two or three annas per acre of revenue.

Such lands are of less value to the zemindars than low rice land, where they can command a good supply of water for irrigation.  But I must not be understood to recommend poor worn out hill lands for tea cultivation,—­land on which nothing else will grow.  Nothing is further from my meaning.  Tea in order to be profitable requires a good sound soil,—­a light loam, well mixed with sand and vegetable matter, moderately moist, and yet not stagnant or sour.  Such a soil, for example, as on these hill sides produces good crops of mundooa, wheat or millet, is well adapted for tea.  It is such lands which I have alluded to as abounding in the Himalayas, and which are, at present, of so little value either to the Government, or to the natives themselves.

The system of Irrigation applied to tea in India is never practised in China.  I did not observe it practised in any of the great tea countries which I visited.  On asking the Chinese manufacturers whom I brought round, and who had been born and brought up in these districts, whether they had seen such a practice, they all replied, “no, that is the way we grow rice:  we never irrigate tea.”  Indeed, I have no hesitation in saying that, in nine cases out of ten, the effects of irrigation are most injurious.  When tea will not grow without irrigation, it is a sure sign that the land employed is not suitable for such a crop.  It is no doubt an excellent thing to have a command of water in case of a long drought, when its agency might be useful in saving a crop which would otherwise fail, but irrigation ought to be used only in such emergent cases.

I have already observed that good tea land is naturally moist, although not stagnant; and we must bear in mind that the tea shrub is not a water plant, but is found in a wild state on the sides of hills.  In confirmation of these views, it is only necessary to observe further, that all the best Himalayan plantations are those to which irrigation has been most sparingly applied.

In cultivating the tea shrub, much injury is often done to a plantation by plucking leaves from very young plants.  In China young plants are never touched until the third or fourth year after they have been planted.  If growing under favorable circumstances, they will yield a good crop after that time.  All that ought to be done, in the way of plucking or pruning before that time, should be done with a view to form the plants, and make them bushy if they do not grow so naturally.  If plucking is commenced too early and continued, the energies of the plants