articles which, being converted into an exhilarating beverage by infusion, are often employed as substitutes for each other, and may therefore conveniently be treated of in the same paper.

The tea-tree is chiefly cultivated in Japan and China. The following description of it, I abridge from Wood's Zoography:" This shrub grows but slowly, and does not arrive at its full size till it is six or seven years old. It attains the height of four or five feet, and sometimes rather more; the root is black, woody, and branched ; the stem is divided into several irregular branches, covered with a thin bark, and tinged with green, towards the extremity of the young shoots. The wood is hard, fibrous, and but sparingly provided with pith. The leaves are attached to the branches by a short slender pedicle, and when at their full size, resemble the leaves of the black cherry-tree, both in figure and colour. They are numerous; of an intense green, serrated at the edges, and disposed alternately on the branches. The flowers spring from the axils of the leaves. When full blown, they measure an inch and more, have an agreeable smell, a white colour, and resemble in form the common wild rose."

In Japan, this useful shrub is cultivated, without much care, in the hedge-rows; in China, whole fields are planted with it, and it is made a subject of considerable attention to the agriculturist. It also grows wild on the rocky mountains, being a more hardy plant than is generally supposed. It is said that, when it shoots out among the rocks, in inaccessible places, the Chinese have recourse to a singular stratagem to possess themselves of the leaves. These places are the haunts of numerous monkeys, whom the tea-gatherers take care to enrage, by various artifices, and these animals endeavour to revenge themselves, by tearing off the branches, and showering them down on the assailants, who immediately collect the harmless missiles, and strip them of their produce.

Sir George Staunton informs us, that the leaves undergo some laborious processes before they are brought to market :- Every leaf passes through the fingers of a female, who rolls it up, almost in the form it had assumed before it became expanded in the progress of its growth. It is afterwards placed upon plates of earthenware, or iron, made much thinner than can be executed by artists out of China. It is confidently said in the country, that no plates of copper are ever employed for that purpose. Indeed, scarcely any utensil in China is of that metal, the chief use of which is for coinage. The colour and astringency of green tea are thought to be derived from the early period at which the leaves are plucked, and which, like unripe fruit, are generally green and acrid." *

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Sir George further informs us, that all ranks in China are fond of tea, and that the upper classes are particularly solicitous in the choice of it." The Emperor Kimlang composed a little poem describing the best mode of infusing it, which is chiefly curious as being the production of a Chinese monarch. But he concludes this effort of the Royal muse with a sentiment which sufficiently shows the estimation in which this beverage is held in the native country of the plant. "At leisure,” says this exalted personage, "sip the delicious liquor. It will effectually dispel those five causes of inquietude that generally assail us, and disturb our repose. We may taste, we may feel, but we cannot express the soft tranquillity occasioned by the decoction, when duly prepared.” ·

It is curious to trace the origin of inveterate habits, such as that which is connected with the production we are considering. The first notice of the tea-plant, by a European writer, seems to have taken place in 1590,

Father Le Compte maintains that the colour and peculiar qualities of green tea are derived from the use of copper plates, and this opinion has been generally received; but modern travellers unite in contradicting his assertion, and in establishing the truth of what is stated by Sir George Staunton.

when Giovanni Botero, without mentioning its name, states that the Chinese have an herb, "out of which they extract a delicate juice which serves them for drink instead of wine." In 1633, the practice was noticed among the Persians; and, in 1639, the Russian ambassador at the court of the Mogul, partook of the infusion, and was offered a quantity of the leaves at his departure, as a present for the Czar, which he refused as an useless article. This beverage seems to have been little known in England, till about the middle of the seventeenth century, when a quantity was brought to this country by Lord Arlington, from Holland, where it had been introduced by the Dutch East India Company, about forty or fifty years before. A pound of tea, in 1666, and for half a century afterwards, sold at sixty shillings. From this latter period, the consumption rapidly increased. In the year 1700, not more than fifty thousand pounds weight were imported into Britain; but, before the close of that century, nearly twenty millions of pounds were sold at the public sales. The importation is now far more considerable; and, under the new arrangements consequent on the opening up of the trade, promises eventually soon to acquire an additional stimulus.

The rival luxury, introduced into this country about the same time with that of tea, is coffee. According to the Abbe Raynal, the native country of the coffee-tree is Upper Ethiopia, where it is still cultivated with success. It is an evergreen of quick growth, rising to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. It has a straight trunk of three or four inches in diameter, bearing a number of branches opposite to each other, furnished with oval entire leaves, somewhat resembling the common laurel. In the angles of these leaves appear little bunches, consisting of four or five white flowers, of an agreeable smell, and resembling the jasmine in figure. The flowers are succeeded by oval berries, each of which contains two seeds, flat and furrowed on one side, convex on the

other. These seeds constitute the article which is so well known under the name of coffee.

The quality which coffee possesses of dissipating sleep is well known; and it is said that it was this property which originally recommended it to use, the monks of an Arabian convent having first employed the decoction to prevent them from sleeping too sound, and neglecting their nocturnal prayers. About the middle, or towards the end, of the fifteenth century, coffee came to be generally made use of in those countries which profess the Mohammedan faith, although the use of it was at first strenuously opposed by their priests, and even some of their princes.

From Arabia, the coffee plant was transported by the Dutch to Batavia and Amsterdam, whence it found its way to France and to the French West Indies, and afterwards to the other American islands, where it is now propagated. It may be successfully cultivated in all tropical countries, and in those bordering on the tropics, but is found to be produced of superior quality in some parts of Arabia, and especially in the neighbourhood of Mocha. The chief art employed in its management, is to supply the roots of the tree sufficiently with water.

Coffee forms the principal beverage of the inhabitants of the East, who are said to be in the habit of taking three or four ounces in the course of the day, without either milk or sugar, but perfumed with various spices. The Persians roast their coffee in the capsule which covers the berries, and grind the whole together. A decoction of the unroasted berries is sometimes drunk by the Turks for whetting the appetite. In France and other Continental countries, it is much more used than in England, where tea is the more usual beverage. The Abbé Raynal informs us, that twelve millions and a half of pounds of this article are annually exported from Arabia alone, of which three millions and a half are bought by the different European companies.

VOL. IV.

K

FIFTH WEEK-FRIDAY.

HUMAN FOOD.-SUGAR.

Or the vegetable productions of foreign countries, there is none of greater value, or held in greater estimation, than that of sugar. A slight sketch of the history of this agreeable and nutritive substance shall form the subject of the present paper.

Sugar, though manufactured in the earliest times in China and the East Indies, does not appear to have been much used by our European ancestors. It seems first to have become known to the western parts of the world by the conquests of Alexander the Great, about three hundred years before the Christian era; and it is supposed to have found its way into Europe at an early period by the Red Sea; but the plant, from which it is extracted, is said by Lafitau to have been probably unknown in this quarter of the world till the time of the crusades. Lucan, in speaking of Pompey's troops, describes, among his auxiliaries, a nation addicted to the use of sugar, as if this was an uncommon peculiarity.* From the East, the sugar cane was transplanted first into the islands of Rhodes and Malta, and then into Sicily, in which latter place it was cultivated, at least, as far back as the middle of the twelfth century.+ From Sicily, the Spaniards are said to have conveyed the sugar cane to the Azores, Madeira, the Canary and Cape Verd Islands in the fifteenth century, and hence it is supposed to have found its way to the West Indies and Brazil. Some authors of credit, indeed, have maintained, that the sugar cane is a native of America and its islands; but whatever truth there may be in this, it certainly is

Quique bibunt tenerâ dulces ab arundine succos.

Lafitau records a gift of a mill for grinding sugar canes, granted to the monastery of St Bennet, in Sicily, in the year 1166.