aguay tea. _Astoria
theiformis_ is used at Santa Fe as tea. The leaves of _Canothus
Americanus_, an astringent herb, have been used as a substitute, under
the name of New Jersey tea.

It has been a matter of surprise why tea should be so much sought
after by the poorer classes, since by many it is looked on more as a
luxury than of use to the human system. The manner in which it acts,
and the cause why it is so much in demand by all classes, is
satisfactorily explained by Liebig; and the benefit, therefore, which
will be conferred by selling it at a low rate, and thus placing it
within the means of all, has at last come to be duly appreciated.
Liebig says, without entering minutely into the medical action of
caffeine, theine, &c., it will surely appear a most striking fact,
even if we were to deny its influence on the process of secretion,
that the substance, with the addition of oxygen and the elements of
water, can yield taurine, the nitrogenised compound peculiar to
bile:--

Carbon. Nitrogen. Hydrogen. Oxygen.
1 atom caffeine or theine = 8 2 5 2
9 atoms water = -- -- 9 9
9 atoms oxygen = -- -- -- 9
__ __ __ __
= 2 atoms taurine 8 2 14 20
= 2 4 9 10

To see how the action of caffeine, theobromine, theine, &c., may be
explained, we must call to mind that the chief constituent of the
bile contains only 3.8 per cent. of nitrogen, of which only the half,
or 1.9 per cent., belongs to the taurine; bile contains, in its
natural state, water and solid matter, in the proportion of ninety
parts by weight of the former, to ten of the latter. If we suppose
these ten parts, by weight of solid matter, to be chloric acid, with
3.87 per cent. of nitrogen, then 100 parts of theine would contain
0.171 of nitrogen in the shape of taurine. Now this quantity is
contained in 0.6 parts of theine, or 2 grains 8/10ths of theine can
give to an ounce of bile the nitrogen it contains in the form of
taurine.

Although an infusion of tea contains no more than the one-tenth of a
grain of theine, still, if it contribute in point of fact to the
formation of bile, the action even of such a quantity cannot be looked
upon as a nullity. Neither