In the interim, the month of December proving excessively hot and rainy, so as to forbid any distant excursions, I turned my attention to the important object of procuring _tea plants_ in number and state fit for exportation; and, observing that almost all the shrubs I saw were too large for this purpose, I applied to M. de Brandao for his help and advice. This gentleman, in the most courteous manner, offered me either seeds or slips from his own tea shrubs. The striking of the latter was, he owned, a hazardous and uncertain affair, though it had the probable advantage of securing a finer kind of plant than could with certainty be raised from seed. I, however, began by asking him for newly gathered seeds, in order to set them in my little nursery garden at Santa Theresa, and he obligingly gave me a thousand of the seeds, perfectly ripe and sound, which is easily known by the purplish-brown color of their integument. M. Houlet immediately set about preparing the soil in which to plant these seeds, and the earth being excessively argillaceous and hard, much digging, manuring, and dressing were needful; in a word, we neglected no precautions which could contribute to the growth of our seeds. In the interim I allowed not a single dry day to elapse without visiting the country house near Rio, in all of which I saw something more or less interesting, either in the culture of tea, or other vegetable productions of commercial value. * * * * * I detected, growing not unfrequently in the environs of Rio, the _Ilex Paraguayensis_ of M. Auguste de St. Hilaire, perfectly identical with the tree which the Jesuits planted in the missions of Paraguay, and whose foliage is an article of great importance throughout Spanish America, and vended under the name of _Paraguay Tea_. A living plant of this shrub was brought home by me, and placed in the Royal Garden at Paris, as well as a species of Vanilla, and many other rare and interesting plants. I also made a valuable collection of woods employed for dyeing, building, and cabinet work, with samples of their flowers, fruits, and leaves, to facilitate botanical determination. Early in January, 1839, M. Houlet began anew sowing tea, not only in the open ground in our little garden, but also in pans, in order to facilitate the lifting of the young plants, and putting them into the cases that I had brought for the purpose. The heat being excessive, we purchased mats, that we might shelter them from the sun, and we gave them water far more frequently. Many of the seeds that we had sown a month previously, were already appearing above the ground, but the soil being of too compact a nature, some did not come up, which warned us to make choice in future of a lighter kind of soil.