There is no doubt that tea acts differently on various individuals. In some it is highly stimulant and exhilarating; in others its effects are oppression and lowness of spirits; and I have known a person who could never indulge in this beverage without experiencing a disposition to commit suicide, and nothing could arouse him from this state of morbid excitement but the pleasure of destroying something, books, papers, or any thing within his reach. Under no other circumstances than this influence of tea were these fearful aberrations observed. It has been remarked that all tea-drinking nations are essentially of a leucophlegmatic temperament, predisposed to scrofulous and nervous diseases. The Chinese, even the degraded Tartar races amongst them, are weak and infirm, their women subject to various diseases arising from debility. Although their confined mode of living, and want of the means of enjoying pure air and exercise, materially tends to render them liable to these affections; still their immoderate use of strong green tea, taken, it is true, in very small quantities at the time, but repeatedly, greatly adds to this predisposition. From long experience I am convinced that, although tea may in general be considered a refreshing and harmless beverage, yet in some peculiar cases it is decidedly injurious; and many diseases that have baffled all medical exertions, have yielded to the same curative means so soon as the action of tea had been suspended. MANDRAGORE. Self-styled wandering Turks and Armenians are frequently met with in crowded cities vending rhubarb, tooth-powder, and various drugs and nostrums, exciting the curiosity of the idlers that group around them, by exhibiting a root bearing a strong resemblance to the human form. This is the far-famed mandragore, of which such wonderful accounts have been related by both ancients and moderns. This plant is the _Atropa Mandragora_ of Linnaeus, and grows wild in the mountainous and shaded parts of Italy, Spain, and the Levant, where it is also cultivated in gardens. The root bears such a likeness, at least in fancy's eyes, to our species, that it was called _Semi-homo_. Hence says Columella, Quamvis semihominis vesano gramine foeta Mandragora pariat flores moestamque cicutam.