Tea Leaves | Page 4

for statistics of the World's Tea Trade, and particularly for information respecting the Teas of Ceylon and India. If our limitations of space had permitted, we should have materially increased the interest of our little book by additional matter derived from the last named firm.
(Omitted) Our colored Frontispiece is a faithful representation of a Chinese tea plant, showing the flower and the seeds.

TEA LEAVES
"Pray thee, let it serve for table-talk."--Merchant of Venice.
"A cup of tea!" Is there a phrase in our language more eloquently significant of physical and mental refreshment, more expressive of remission of toil and restful relaxation, or so rich in associations with the comforts and serenity of home life, and also with unpretentious, informal, social intercourse?
If rank in the scale of importance of any material thing is to be determined by its extensive and continued influence for good, to tea must be conceded a very elevated position among those agencies which have contributed to man's happiness and well- being.
Most remarkable changes have occurred in the production of tea during the past century. About sixty years ago all the tea consumed on the globe was grown in China and Japan. Our knowledge of the growth and manufacture of tea was then of an uncertain and confused character, and no European had ever taken an active part in the production of a pound of tea. To-day, about one-half of the tea consumed in the world is grown and manufactured upon English territory, on plantations owned and superintended by Englishmen, who have thoroughly mastered every detail of the art, while nearly all the tea drank in Great Britain is English grown. Twenty years ago, the suggestion that tea might yet be grown upon a commercial scale in the United States was received with derision by the Press and its readers; but one tea estate in South Carolina has during the past year grown, manufactured, and sold at a profit, several thousand of the tea of good quality, which brought a price equal to that of foreign fine teas.
A natural taste for hot liquid foods and drinks is common to all races of men, and they may be traced in the soups of meat and fish, and in their decoctions or infusions of vegetable leaves, seeds, barks, etc.
Hot "teas" were in habitual use as beverages among civilized nations long before they ever heard of Chinese tea, of coffee, or of cocoa. The English people, for instance, freely indulged in infusions of Sage leaves, of leaves of the Wild Marjoram, the Sloe, or blackthorn, the currant, the Speedwell, and of Sassafras bark. In America, Sassafras leaves and bark were used for teas by the early colonists, as were the leaves of Gaultheria (Wintergreen), the Ledums (Labrador tea), Monarda (Horsemint, Bee-balm, or Oswego tea), Ceanothus (New Jersey tea or red-root), etc. Charles Lamb, in his essay upon Chimney Sweeps, mentions the public house of Mr. Reed, on Fleet street in London, as a place where Sassafras tea (and Salop) were still served daily to customers in his time, about 1823. Mate, Yerba, or Paraguay tea has been a national beverage for millions of people in the central portions of South America for several centuries.
With the exception of Mate, not one of the above named substitutes for Chinese tea contains the peculiar nerve stimulating and nerve refreshing constituent upon which depends the physiological value of Black or Green tea, the Theine: nor do they possess the characteristic flavoring principle or essential oil which distinguishes commercial teas from all other known plant products. The Ledums are indeed accredited by Professor James F. Johnson (Chemistry of Common Life) with stimulating and narcotic properties, but the same may be said of tobacco.
A comforting, stimulating and healthful beverage, which has been in habitual use by the most extensive nation of the globe for more than a thousand years, and which has at length become a necessity as well as a luxury for seven hundred millions of people, or of a majority of the inhabitants of the earth, is certainly worthy of more than the passing thought which accompanies its daily use in the form of "cup of tea."
Douglass Jerriold, writing of tea, some 50 years ago, said:-- "Of the social influence of Tea upon the masses of the people in this country, it is not very easy to say too much. It has civilized brutish and turbulent homes, saved the drunkard from his doom, and to many a mother, who else have indeed been most wretched and forlorn, it has given cheerful, peaceful thoughts that have sustained her. Its work among us in England and elsewhere, aye, throughout the civilized world, has been humanizing and good. Its effect upon us all has been socially healthful; peaceful, gentle and hearty."
There is no article of common use about which so