Hi HOLLY-LEAF TEA. 



disagreeable during the process of roasting, but not so when the 

 leaves are dried enough for use, and such is precisely the case 

 with Coffee, whose fumes, when roasting, are anything but plea- 

 sant. Paraguay tea is drank with a little lime-juice and sugar, 

 and sucked from the tea-pot (Mate) through a wooden tube 

 (Bambilla); but I used milk and sugar, after the English fashion, 

 and drank it out of a tea-cup, and children, who may surely be 

 considered unbiassed judges, drank it freely. 



Failures in the manufacture of Holly-tea must not be taken as 

 conclusive evidence of its worthlessness any more than the want 

 of information upon any other branch of industry, leading to 

 unsatisfactory results, would condemn it ; rather let them lead 

 to perseverance in improving, for if the manipulation of tea had 

 been an easy matter, Mr. Fortune's journey to China and his 

 procuring, at great cost and hazard, Chinese manufacturers for our 

 tea plantations in India would have been labour in vain. I beg it 

 to be distinctly understood, that this is no nostrum of mine like 

 " roasted corn," or any other quackery. All the Hollies that will 

 bear the open air in England are here, and I have therefore the 

 best means of comparing their characters. I have shown of what 

 importance Holly-leaves are to millions inhabiting a finer country 

 than ours, aud I do believe that the essence of our English Holly- 

 leaf is not inferior to theirs, and if it is in reality as good as Ilex 

 Paraguariensis, its importance to that portion of Europe, where it 

 is indigenous, will be immense. I cannot imagine the Jesuits 

 preferring this beverage and manufacturing the article so exten- 

 sively in such a country, if it were not a good thing, for, among 

 all the faults laid at their doors, we do not hear that they have 

 been charged, as a body, with dullness as regarded their neigh- 

 bour's best interests or their own. 



What will tea-drinkers, confirmed tippling tea-drinkers, say to 

 this? The very tea itself becomes cheap at last, aud abundant, 

 even growing in the garden hedge. A forest of tea-trees in full 

 leaf at our doors ! Such a harvest has never before been seen ; 

 waste not the Holly any more upon whip-handles, peel it not for 

 Birdlime as formerly, squander it not even at Christmas, but reap 

 it, roast it, and drink it again and again, for the store will be 

 annually renewed and the future foliage will furnish finer tea 

 leaves than those just gathered. 



