America's Crop Heritage


 FORTUNE HIRED TO FIND TEA
 In a report on plants worthy of introduction, Commissioner
Mason listed tea as being desirable for home consumption. Many
people believed that American growers could compete success-
fully with the Asiatics for the tea market. America had new
machinery for processing tea, a plentiful supply of skilled and
cheap slave labor, and superior transportation facilities. An article
in the Annual Report for 1855 described the Chinese methods of
cultivating and harvesting tea. As interest in the subject grew
stronger, Mason engaged Robert Fortune, a plant explorer, to
obtain tea plants from China.
 Fortune had already acquired a reputation for his services to
the British Empire, exploring for three years in the interior of
China and collecting seeds and plants for the London Horticulture
Society. He also had been employed by the British East India
Company in 1848 to procure tea seeds from the Himalaya region,
and this was the beginning of a successful tea industry in northern
India. Fortune is also remembered for the many varieties of the
chrysanthemum he sent to Europe, which later found their way
into American gardens.'
 At the request of the Patent Office, Fortune sailed from Eng-
land for China in March, 1858. He wrote from Shanghai that he
had made arrangements with natives for large supplies of seeds
and plants at the proper season. Commissioner Joseph Holt, who
was Mason's successor, hoped through Fortune's efforts to be able
to found a new agricultural industry in the South. Meteorological
and geological studies were made to determine the areas most
similar to the native environment of the plants to be imported.
 Fortune sent tea and camphor seeds to the Patent Office and
entrusted two cases of plants and seeds to the Nabob bound for
New York. These cases contained specimens of indigo tea, the
soap bean, and the grass cloth plant. Apparently deciding that the
plants needed no further expert attention, Holt dismissed Fortune
before he could return to America.2
 The tea seed, which was shipped in Wardian cases, flourished,
 His various explorations are described in his three books: Three Years
Wandering in the Northern Provinces of China (1847), A Journey to the Tea
Countries in China (1852), and Yeddo and Peking: A Narrative of a Journey
to the Capitals of China and Japan (1863).
 2Fortune expected to be paid six months' salary for this sudden change of
mind on the part of Holt.