$ 
30 ON THE PARAGUAY TEA. 
IV.—Some account of the Paraguay Tea (Ilex Paraguayensis). 
(With figures; Tass. I. II. and III). 
Few persons are ignorant of the fact, that, throughout a 
large portion of South America, a favourite beverage is em- 
ployed under the name of Maté or Paraguay Tea. But 
many are of opinion that the plant producing it resembles 
the tea- plant of China, little aware that it is a kind of Holly, 
and a species not very unlike some of the varieties of our 
English Holly (Ilex <Agquifolium). That there should have 
been a difficulty in determining the vegetable yielding so 
celebrated a drink, is the less surprising, when we consider 
that the country, where it has been extensively grown and 
prepared, whence it derives one of its appellations (Paraguay); 
and from which it is alone exported, has been held for a long 
period of years in the most complete state of tyranny and 
despotism of any country in the world, by the late Dr. 
Francia; of tyranny so great that no stranger was admitted 
within its limits, or if admitted, he was detained a 
prisoner. 
Until about 1822, nothing whatever was known respecting 
the particular genus and species of the shrub whose leaves 
furnished the Maté, or Paraguay Tea. 'The first of these two 
appellations originated in the name of the cup (Maté) from 
which the tea was drunk. It had further the name of 
Yerba (the herb or plant), par excellence. Azara, who, in 
many respects, faithfully describes the plant, is most faulty in 
referring it to the Culen of Chili. At length St. Hilaire, in 
the 9th vol. of the Mémoires du Muséum d' Histoire Naturelle, 
p- 351, in his Apercu d'un Voyage dans l'intérieur du Brésil" 
while at Curitiba, in the capitaincy of St. Paul, found the 
Maté of Paraguay growing abundantly in the woods, and he 
takes occasion to observe that authors had been uncertain of 
the genus of the plant in question; but that having found it 
both in flower and in fruit, he was enabled to pronounce it 
to be an Ilex, and in a note he designates it as * Ilex Para- 
guariensis,” thus :— 
