Hyson Tea of commerce; while the same operations performed on the residuum of it yielded the Common Hyson; and the refuse of the third quality again afforded the Coarse Hyson.—­Finally, the broken and unrolled foliage, which were rejected in the last sittings, furnish what is called Family Tea, and the better kind of which is called Chato, and the inferior Chuto.  The latter sort is never sold, but kept for consumption in the families of the growers.

Such is the mode of preparation pursued at Rio Janeiro, though I must add that the process employed at the Botanic Garden being most carefully performed in order to serve as a model for private cultivators of tea, the produce is superior to the generality, so that we dare not judge of all Brazilian tea by what is raised at the garden of Rio.  I was also assured, that at Saint Paul each grower had his own peculiar method, influencing materially the quality of the tea, which decided me to visit that province, where I hoped to gain valuable information respecting the culture and fabrication of tea, especially considered as an article of commerce.

In the interim, the month of December proving excessively hot and rainy, so as to forbid any distant excursions, I turned my attention to the important object of procuring tea plants in number and state fit for exportation; and, observing that almost all the shrubs I saw were too large for this purpose, I applied to M. de Brandao for his help and advice.  This gentleman, in the most courteous manner, offered me either seeds or slips from his own tea shrubs.  The striking of the latter was, he owned, a hazardous and uncertain affair, though it had the probable advantage of securing a finer kind of plant than could with certainty be raised from seed.  I, however, began by asking him for newly gathered seeds, in order to set them in my little nursery garden at Santa Theresa, and he obligingly gave me a thousand of the seeds, perfectly ripe and sound, which is easily known by the purplish-brown color of their integument.  M. Houlet immediately set about preparing the soil in which to plant these seeds, and the earth being excessively argillaceous and hard, much digging, manuring, and dressing were needful; in a word, we neglected no precautions which could contribute to the growth of our seeds.  In the interim I allowed not a single dry day to elapse without visiting the country house near Rio, in all of which I saw something more or less interesting, either in the culture of tea, or other vegetable productions of commercial value.

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