TEA TREE. 1 4 ? 
to this effect. Tea is a Chinese and Japan shrub, 
celebrated for its leaf, immense quantities being an- 
nually exported into other countries, with which 
the North Americans and Europeans, particularly 
the English, compose an agreeable drink. The 
leaf bears in commerce the same name as the plant. 
The tea leaf, as well as that of tobacco, affords us a 
striking example of the power of habit over man- 
kind. Before the conquest of the New World, and 
the discovery of a passage to the East Indies by the 
way of the Cape of Good Hope, the Europeans 
neither used tea nor tobacco ; at present not a day 
passes without their using both. Within these two 
centuries, fleets have been equipped, and men and 
money sacrificed, to ransack both Indies in search 
of vegetable productions, of which neither the pos- 
session nor the use is calculated to increase the 
happiness of the people, or diminish their wants. 
The taste of Europeans for Indian productions is 
Worthy of observation. We are not astonished that 
the inhabitants of Pekin should indulge themselves 
with tea all the day long ; the plant grows in their 
country, and was presented them by nature ; but 
that a people situated five or six thousand leagues 
from China or Japan, should venture so much to 
procure this favourite drink, and, not content with 
their excellent beer, and the pipes of wine which 
their commerce procures them, should make a great 
part of their enjoyment consist in taking about 
twenty cups of tea in the course of twenty-four hours, 
appears singularly ridiculous. Among the various 
L 2 
