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The following is the description usually given of the Tea-tree, without 
attending much to the two kinds discriminated by Linnaeus. 
Tea is a branchy evergreen shrub, which, according to Kempfer and 
Thunberg, grows to the height of four or five feet, though other travellers 
assert that it rises sometimes to thirty. 
Its leaves are alternate, hard, oval, or elliptic; of a somewhat shining 
green colour, entire near the base, but serrated in the rest of their length, 
and supported on a short and half-cylindric foot-stalk. The buds are acute, 
and accompanied with a husk, which detaches itself, and drops off at the 
period of its developement. 
The flowers grow singly, or sometimes, but more rarely two-and-two, in 
the eyes of the leaves, on short and somewhat thick pedicles. 
The calyx is small, persistent, and has five obtuse divisions. 
The corolla , for the most part, has six white petals, round and open: the 
two exterior ones are smaller and unequal. Its breadth is about the third 
of an inch. 
The stamina, which are more than two hundred in number, are shorter 
than the corolla, and attached under the germen. Each anther has two 
cells. 
The germen, which is of a rounded triangular form, and surmounted by 
a style divided into three filiform stigmata, becomes a capsule with three 
round monospermous cells united at the base, and opening longitudinally 
on one side only. 
The seeds are spherical, internally angular, of a rather large size, covered 
with a thin shining pellicle, a little hard, and of a maroon colour. The kernel 
is oily, and of a bitter and disagreeable taste, which produces salivation, and 
even occasions nausea. 
It is cultivated every where, from Canton to Pekin; where the winter, 
according to the observations of the missionaries, is more severe than at 
Paris. It would, no doubt, be possible, says the learned Des Fontaines, to 
of the two kinds here given may be noticed, and the greater thinness and length, &c. of the green 
leaf will he readily observed. It is said, that the Green Tea being once in fashion in England, the 
East India Company wished to have chiefly this sort, and it was returned in answer by the Chinese, 
“ that to extirpate their Bohea Tea-trees, and plant in their room Green Tea-trees, would take up 
several years to accomplish, nor had they, at that time, Green Tea enough to supply our market.” 
Hence persons were engaged to write down the Green Tea, and turn the tide of public opinion in 
favour of the Black Tea, which is now almost universally drank in England, or mixed with only a 
sprinkling of green. J 
