sometimes proves indigestible.

The plant whose leaves yield the tea of commerce is variously
termed Camellia Theifera; Thea Sinensis; or Chinensis; Thea
Assamica; Thea Bohea and Thea Viridis, according to its origin,
variety of the writer's fancy. While the real character of the
East Indian or Assam tea plant has been recognized by botanical
science less than seventy years, and the Chinese tea plant has
probably been utilized for fifteen hundred years, it will be more
convenient to begin our remarks with the later discovery.

Writers at the present time continue to describe the tea plant as
a "shrub" of about six feet in height. The indigenous tea plant
of India, which is believed to be the parent stock of Chinese tea
plants, is a tree, growing to a height of 20 to 35 feet with a
trunk 8 to 10 inches in diameter, and bearing leaves of a lively
green, 8 to 9 inches in length and 4 inches in breadth. The
leaves are much more delicate in texture than those of Chinese
plants, which hardly reach 4 inches in length, and the former
contain a larger percentage of the invaluable alkaloid, Theine.
Dr. Chas. U. Sheppard, in a historical sketch of Tea Culture in
South Carolina, tells us that a tea tree which was planted
planted by Michaux, about 15 miles from Charleston, and about the
year 1800, had attained a height of say 15 feet when he saw it a
few years ago.

The native Indian tree is, however, not now utilized upon a
commercial scale for tea purposes. The reason for neglecting the
native plant we do not find definitely stated, but infer from
several sources of information that it is owing to the extreme