Rigid enemies of alcoholic drink often assure us, in poetical and ecstatic language, that water is the only reasonable and right drink for man, as for other animals; but the water which they recommend and describe as gushing and sparkling in mountain rills does not come to the hearth and home of every mountain dweller, much less is it attainable by the inhabitants of cities or boggy plains. The hardy beasts of the field, if they can get the water pure, manage to endure its coldness in all seasons; so perhaps might we, if we could recover robustness of the stomach without losing any advantage of a developed brain. That such recovery is impossible is not here asserted, but simply that, under the existing circumstances, the water (through its impurities or its coldness) often needs to be cooked, to be warmed, to have then some taste superadded which shall overcome mawkishness. When this is conceded, the question arises, will no native botany suffice? Are we of necessity driven to import tea from China or Assam? Such are the wonderful and deep harmonies of Nature that in each long-inhabited country the constitution of animals becomes adapted to its plants as well as to its climate, and finds among them not only its food, but its remedies for disease. Native herbs are often found more health-restoring than pretentious foreign drugs; nor is it extravagant to imagine that native leaves and berries might adapt themselves as well to the palate of Englishmen as tea and coffee, and better to their stomachs, if, instead of buying from the foreigner, we had duly studied our home resources. In the case of coffee, it curiously happens that there are persons among us who prefer what is called dandelion coffee to the coffee of Arabia; and that the preference is sincere seems proved by the accident that the dandelion thus prepared is dearer than the best Mocha. Nor does this dearness weigh against our argument. Twenty years ago brown bread was charged by bakers as fancy bread; ten years ago lentils were double their present price; in each case because the demand was so uncertain. The price of dandelion would quickly come down if it were in large and daily request. As substitutes for tea many leaves may be named which will not be called simply medicinal, prominently those of the sweet bay, the peach, and the black currant. If we were by any cause cut off from tropical markets, some combination would soon be discovered which carried off public preference; and when a national taste in it had once been established, every good purpose would have been attained without the foreign article. Should we not in that case moralize with wonder over the vast apparatus of great ships, which had been built, and manned, and stored, and sent to sea, with loss of sailors' lives, entailing widowhood and orphanhood, for no better reason than to bring back leaves, for which adequate substitutes abound at home? This argument undertakes not to prove, but to illustrate.