1892 The flowing bowl when and what to drink (1892, c1891)

HISTORY.

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thousand years' cultivation a great number of varieties had sprung forth from this one kind. The tea shrub grows in its wild state 6 to 10 metres high; while the cultivated shrub reaches a height of not more than 2 metres, or 6 feet. The cultivation of tea, according to Chinese tradi- tions of the fourth century, came from Corea to China, and from there to Japan in the ninth century. About the sixth century the Chinese used to drink tea nearly all over their country. The Europeans have tried to plant and cultivate the tea-shrub in Bengal, Ceylon, on the western coast of Africa, in Java and Sumatra, in Brazil, and many other places. In all these districts the shrub grows, but is degenerated detrimentally, as its aroma never reaches that of the genuine Chinese tea. The method of extracting the tein by boiling water has been known in China as long as the cultivation of the shrub; the Europeans, however, learned it very first by the Dutch East India Company, about the middle of the seventeenth century, although the first importation of tea to Europe had taken place already in the year 1636. England got its first tea in the year 1666. The consumption of it increased continually, and was general in the eighteenth century. Although tea was believed for a long while a sure and reliable drug for lengthening life, the habit of tea-drinking is not so widely spread as that of coffee. Tea - drinking has become a national habit only late,