CHAPTER  VII.
 

                  .NEW  PRODUCTS.



               (See Appendix, N03. II. and III.)

     Tea—Cinchona—Cacao—Indiarubber—Cardamoms—Liberian

                         Coffee, etc.



   TEA cultivation was said to be  tried in Ceylon in the

     time of the  Dutch, but there is no reliable evidence of

this tradition, and  Dr. Trimen  does not believe it; *  for

although there is a wild plant (Cassia auriculata),  called

the  Matara tea plant, from which the Sinhalese in the

south of the island are accustomed to make an infusion,

yet  nothing was done with  the true tea  plant till long

after coffee was established.   Between  1839  and  1842,

under  the auspices  of Governor Stewart-Mackenzie and

others, experiments were made with  the Assam tea plant

at Peradeniya and  Nuwara Eliya, but without permanent

results.  A little later, the Messrs. Worms  (cousins of the

Rothschilds, who  did  an  immense  deal  in developing

Ceylon)  introduced  the  China  plant,  and,  planting  up



  * Dr. Trimen is kind enough to  report to me (September 1892)  as

follows :—" Bennet,  in his ' Ceylon and  its Capabilities,' gives a figure,

a good one,  of the real tea plant which, he says, was collected near

Batticaloa (I think  in 1826), but from the text he clearly confused it

with our Matara tea, the leaves of the ' Ranawara ' {Cassia auriculata).

Still I think true tea may have been grown in some gardens in Ceylon]

as it was certainly in the Botanic Gardens at Kalutara before 1824, the

date of  Morris's Catalogue.  Assam tea was sent from Calcutta as early

as 1839, and planted at Nuwara Eliya."

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