What says science concerning this extraordinary power? One of two things is certain: either that the coca contains some nutritive principle which directly sustains the strength, or it does not contain it, and, therefore, simply deceives hunger while acting on the system as an excitement. As to the existence of a nutritive principle in coca, although it cannot positively be denied, on account of the quantity of nitrogen, together with assimilable carbonized products, which have been found to exist in the leaf; yet their proportion is so small compared with the mass, and especially with the quantity that a coquero consumes at once, that they can scarcely be taken into consideration. Moreover, it has also been affirmed that coca, as it is habitually taken, does not satiate hunger. The Indians who accompany travellers, will chew the leaves during the day, but, on the arrival of evening, they will fill their stomachs like fasting men, devouring, at a single meal, enough to satisfy an ordinary man for two days. The Indian of the Cordillera is like the vulture of his mountains, when provisions abound, he gorges himself greedily, when they are scarce, his robust nature enables him to content himself with very little. This is the evidence—what is the verdict? That the use of the coca assists, perhaps, to support the abstinence; but that its action is confined to an excitement of a peculiar kind, very different from that of the ordinary excitants, and especially alcohol. Brandy gives strength, but that strength is only a loan, at the expense of strength reserved for the future. The stimulus produced by coca is slow and sustained, in part owing to the manner of its employment, as the infusion acts differently from the leaf as taken in the ordinary way. Tea and coffee act specially on the brain, on which they produce an anti-soporific effect; but while coca produces a little of this effect when taken in large doses, it does not act perceptibly upon the brain in small doses. To account for the ordinary effects of the leaf, one must suppose that its action, instead of being localized, as in the case of tea and coffee, is diffused, and bears upon the nervous system generally, producing a sustained stimulus, calculated to impart to those under its influence, that support which has been attributed erroneously to peculiar nutritive properties.