Tue history of the tea tree in China shews that it became famous first for the qualities of the leaf when infused, and some centuries later was accepted as a national beverage. The native herbalists found out that the infusion of tea leaves was not only bitter in taste, but has the power of preventing sleep. The first mention of it is in the Lr-ya or about a thousand years before Christ. It is then only spoken of as bitter. Medical books began to be written about B.C. 600, and from that time to B.C. 200 there was much study of natural history undertaken to learn the tastes and healing qualities of plants and minerals. The herbalists of that time must have known that tea leaf infusion tends to keep from sleeping, but the first plain statement of this which is now accessible isin the Kwang-ya of the third century, a useful dictionary where many of the results of research in the properties of plants are briefly recorded. This was the time when Buddhism was spreading its monasteries rapidly throughout the country, when Hindoomedical knowledge was at the di medical plants were more tha ever cultivated. Alchemy was flourishing, having sprang up in the third century before Christ and having been much favoured by the Han dynasty emperors. Alchemy always embraced two departments, botanical alchemy and mineral alchemy, and it was the former that favoured the examination of the properties of all plants. All through the five centuries of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms, the physicians of China were busy in experimenting on the cure of disease by vegetable and mineral medicines under the fictitious light of the theories alchemy. Of this we see the result in the hook of Ko-hung belonging to the fourth century of our era. He is the most voluminous author in alchemy the Chinese have ever had, and his very audacity of statement leads the reader to lose all confidence in his veracity. But his book is lively in style, plain-spoken in dogma, and rich in contemporary facts and stories, so that it con stitutes a living picture of the time... In this book tea is only spoken of as a bitter plant, and the physicians and alchemists had evidently not directed muchoftheir attention to it, nor had they foreseen that in a short time -it was to become the universal beverage of the Chinese nation. Yet in western China along the Yangtsein Hupeh and szechuen on both sides of the Gorges the people m the third century made cakes of rice and tea leaves, the first form of the brick tea of which modern Russia is so fond.
The old account says that these cakes were ground to a powder and boiling water was poured on the powder for drinking. There seems to be no doubt then that brick tea infusion was drunk in China in the third century after Christ to freshen the mental faculties. There is no instance mentioned ier than this, though the plant being well-known long befure it is very likely to have taken ph tu the habits of the uceupying the four prees, we only know of broth and wine being the common beverages of the Chinese. The wine was never distilled, uor was it made of grapes.
int fact brewed from glutinous rice.
In regard to the part of China where tea was first introduced as a beverage there is no question that it was Kiaugnan. 'The tea of the hills in Kiang-nan has an extremely good flavour' and many celebrated kinds are produced there. he accounts say that it was in the third and fourth centuries that the practice of drinking ten began: to extend in that region. It was used occasionally in place of wine in the Imperial court of Nanking in the time of the Woo kingdom, as we know from the History of the Three Kingdoms. Yet in the novel of that name tea is not mentioned. The author being aware apparently that tea was not commonly used in China till the Tang dynasty, has not, it is believed, made any of his many heroes on any occasion drink tea, It was, however, occasionally drunk then at Nawking as history shews, If however it be asked why tea drinking spread in Kiangnan it may be answered that the monks on the hills planted trees and -among them medical, plants in the near neighbourhood of their monasteries. Very likely it was in this way that tea drinking origin ated. The Buddhist monks are teetotallers and abstain from animal food. On both these accounts they seek refined kinds of food and drink, such as are furnished by the vegetable kingdom in abundance. The excellent gustatory qualities of the Buddhist cuisine in monasteries are well-known. They cultivate vegetables largely both for their own use and to send to market. 'I'heir
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.