80 CONVERSATIONS ON THE 



medical properties. They call it the Georgia 

 bark. It is a small tree, seldom growing 

 higher than twenty or twenty-five feet, with 

 beautiful large flowers, white, with rose- 

 coloured stripes. The wood is soft, and of no 

 use ; but the bark is exceedingly bitter, and 

 the people in Georgia take the decoction of it 

 in cases of fever and ague, just as we do the 

 Peruvian bark ; and I have been told that it 

 cures very frequently." 



" And is this one of the three single trees 

 you said you would tell us about ?" 



" Yes, this is one of the three ; and the last 

 is the coffee-tree." 



" Not the coffee that we drink, Uncle Philip? 

 that does not grow on a tree, does it ?" 



" It grows on a shrub, or very small tree ; 

 but the coffee-tree that I mean is a different 

 thing : it received its name from the first set- 

 tlers in Tennessee and Kentucky, where it is 

 most abundant. Of course, you know, when 

 they first went into those countries there were 

 no steamboats to bring them whatever they 

 wanted from New-Orleans, and it was not as 

 easy to carry all sorts of goods from the great 

 commercial cities into the West as it is now ; 

 and, besides, they were too poor to be able to 



