SECTION X.
SUCCEDANEA.
Curiosity and interest would mutually induce the Europeans to make the most diligent enquiries in order to discover the real Tea shrub, or a substitute in some other vegetable most resembling it. Simon Paulli, a celebrated physician and botanist at Copenhagen, was the first who pretended to have discovered the real Tea plant in Europe. By opening some Tea leaves, he found them so much like those of the Dutch myrtle[57], (Flor. Su. 907.) that he obstinately maintained they were productions of the same species of Tea; though he was afterwards refuted by several botanists in Europe, and by the specimens sent to him, and to Dr. Mentzel of Berlin, from the East-Indies, by Dr. Cleyer[58].
Father Labat next thought he had discovered the real Tea-plant in Martinico[59], agreeing, he says, in all respects with the China sort. He pretends also to have procured Tea seeds from the East Indies, and to have raised the plant in America; but, from his own account, this supposed Tea appears to be only a species of Lysimachia, or what is called West-India Tea[60].
Many other pretended discoveries of the Oriental Tea-tree have been related; all which have proved erroneous, when properly enquired into. The genus of plant, called by Kæmpfer Tsubakki[61], has the nearest resemblance to it. The leaves of several European herbs have been used at different times as substitutes for Tea, either from some similarity in the shape of the leaves, or in the taste and flavour; among these, two or three species of Veronica are particularly recommended[62], besides the leaves of sage[63], myrtle[64], betony[65], sloe[66], agrimony, wild rose[67], and many others[68]. Whether any of these are really more salutary or not, is undetermined; and we now find, that from the palace to the cottage every other substitute has yielded to the genuine Asiatic Tea[69].