With respect to Africa, Sir William Hooker[561] mentioned specimens brought from Sierra Leone, from Aguapim, from the banks of the Quorra, and from the Island of St. Thomas, in Western Africa. Nees[562] indicates the species in several districts of Cape Colony, even in the bush and in mountainous country. Richard[563] mentions places in Abyssinia, which also seem to be beyond the limits of cultivation, but he owns to being not very sure of the species. Anderson, on the contrary, positively asserts that _Panicum maximum_ was brought from the banks of the Mozambique and of the Zambesi rivers by the traveller Peters.[564] The species is known to have been introduced into Mauritius by the Governour Labourdonnais,[565] and to have become naturalized from cultivation as in Rodriguez and the Seychelles Isles. Its introduction into Asia must be recent, for Roxburgh and Miquel do not mention the species. In Ceylon it is only cultivated.[566] On the whole, it seems to me that the probabilities are in favour of an African origin, as its name indicates, and this is confirmed by the general, but insufficiently grounded opinion of authors.[567] However, as the plant spreads so rapidly, it is strange that it has not reached Egypt from the Mozambique or Abyssinia, and that it was introduced so late into the islands to the east of Africa. If the co-existence of phanerogamous species in Africa and America previous to cultivation were not extremely rare, it might be inferred in this case; but this is unlikely in the case of a cultivated plant of which the diffusion is evidently very easy. _Article III._—+Various Uses of the Stem and Leaves.+ +Tea+—_Thea sinensis_, Linnæus. In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the shrub which produces tea was still very little known, Linnæus gave it the name of _Thea sinensis_. Soon afterwards, in the second edition of the _Species Plantarum_, he judged it better to distinguish two species, _Thea bohea_ and _Thea viridis_, which he believed to correspond to the commercial distinction between black and green teas. It has since been proved that there is but one species, comprehending several varieties, from all of which either black or green tea may be obtained according to the process of manufacture. This question was settled, when another was raised, as to whether _Thea_ really forms a genus by itself distinct from the genus _Camellia_. Some authors make _Thea_ a section of the old genus _Camellia_; but from the characters indicated with great precision by Seemann,[568] it seems to me that we are justified in retaining the genus _Thea_, together with the old nomenclature of the principal species.