that the leaves of the coffee-plant contain the same essential principle for which the berries are so much valued.  In Sumatra, the natives scarcely use anything else.  The leaves are cured like tea.  And the tree will produce leaves over a much larger habitat than it will berries.”  Should the decoction of the leaves prove as agreeable as that of the berry, we shall have a much cheaper coffee; though it remains to be proved that they contain the essential oil as well as the cafeine.

The coffees of Java, Ceylon, and Mocha are most esteemed.  The quantities produced are quite limited.  Manila and Arabia together give less than 4,500 tons.  Cuba yields 5,000 tons per annum; St. Domingo, 18,000; Ceylon and the British East Indies, 16,000; Java, 60,000; and Brazil, 142,000.  Yet, in 1774, a Franciscan friar, named Villaso, cultivated a single coffee-tree in the garden of the convent of San Antonio, in Brazil.  In the estimates for 1853, we find that Great Britain consumes 17,500 tons; France, 21,500; Germany, (Zollverein), 58,000; and the United States, about 90,000 tons.  It is worth remarking how small is the comparative consumption of tea in France.  The importation of tea for 1840 was only 264,000 kilogrammes (less than 600,000 pounds).

In Asia, coffee is drunk in a thick farinaceous mixture.  With us the cup of coffee is valued by its clearness.  We generally drink it with sugar and milk.  The French with their meals use it as we do,—­but after dinner, invariably without milk (cafe noir).  And we would suggest to the nervous and the dyspeptic, who do not want to resign the luxury of coffee, or to whom its effects as an arrester of metamorphosis are beneficial, that when drunk on a full stomach its effects upon the nerves are much less felt than when taken fasting or with the meals.

In the consumption of tea the United States rank next to Great Britain.  Tea is the chief import from China into this country.  The tea-plant flourishes from the equator to the forty-fifth parallel of latitude; though it grows best between the twenty-third and the twenty-fifth parallels.  Probably it can be successfully cultivated in our Southern States.  Mr. Fortune considers that all varieties of tea are derived from the same plant.  Other authorities say that there are two species, the green and the black,—­Thea viridis and Thea Bohea.  This point is yet unsettled.  Tea is grown in small, shrub-like plantations, resembling vineyards.  As it is a national beverage, certain localities are as much valued for choice varieties as are the famous vintage-hills and slopes of Southern France.  The buds and the leaves are used; and there are three harvestings,—­in February, April, and June.  The young, unfolded buds of February furnish the “Youi” and “Soumlo,” or “Imperial Teas.”  These are the delicate “Young Hysons” which we are supposed to buy sometimes, but most of which are consumed by the Mandarins.  Souchong, Congo,