in the same way, and beaten until they are soft, and then twisted into a thick string, they form the pigtail or twist of the chewer. Cigars are formed of the dried leaves, deprived of their midribs, and rolled up into a short spindle. When cut straight, or truncated at each end, as is the custom at Manilla, they are distinguished as cheroots.

For the snuff-taker, the dried leaves are sprinkled with water, laid in heaps, and allowed to ferment. They are then dried again, reduced to powder, and baked or roasted. The dry snuffs, like the Scotch and Irish, are usually prepared from the midribsthe rappees, or moist snuffs, from the soft part of the leaves. The latter are also variously scented, to suit the taste of the customer.

Extensively as it is used, it is surprising how very few can state distinctly the effects which tobacco produces can explain the kind of pleasure the use of it gives them-why they began, and for what reason they continue the indulgence.

In truth,

few have thought of these pointshave cared to analyse their sensations when under the narcotic influence of tobacco-or, if they have analysed them, would care to tell truly what kind of relief it is which they seek in the use of it.

"In habitual smokers," says Dr Pereira, "the practice, when employed moderately, provokes thirst, increases the secretion of saliva, and produces a remarkably soothing and tranquillising effect, on the mind, which has made it so much admired and adopted by all classes of society, and by all nations, civilised and barbarous." Taken in excess in any form, and especially by persons unaccustomed to it, it produces nausea, vomiting, in some cases purging, universal trembling, staggering, convulsive movements, paralysis, torpor, and death. Cases are on record of persons killing themselves by smoking seventeen or eighteen pipes at a sitting. With some constitutions it never agrees; but both our author and Dr Christison of Edinburgh agree that "no well-ascertained ill effects have been shown to result from the habitual practice of smoking." The

effects of chewing are of a similar kind. Those of snuffing are only less in degree; and the influence which tobacco exercises in the mouth, in promoting the flow of saliva, &c., manifests itself when used as snuff in producing sneezing, and in increasing the discharge of mucus from the nose. The excessive use of snuff, however, blunts the sense of smell, alters the tone of voice, and occasionally produces dyspepsia and loss of appetite. In rarer cases it ultimately induces apoplexy and delirium.

We

But it is the soothing and tranquillising effect it has on the mind for which tobacco is chiefly indulged in. And amid the teasing paltry cares, as well as the more poignant griefs of life, what a blessing that a mere material soother and tranquilliser can be found, accessible alike to all-to the desolate and the outcast, equally with him who is rich in a happy home and the felicity of sympathising friends! Is there any one so sunk in happiness himself, as to wonder that millions of the world-chafed should flee to it for solace? Yet the question still remains which is to bring out the peculiar characteristic of tobacco. may take for granted that it acts in some way upon the nervous system; but what is the special effect of tobacco on the brain and nerves, to which the pleasing reverie it produces is to be ascribed? "The pleasure of the reverie consequent on the indulgence of the pipe consists," according to Dr Madden, "in a temporary annihilation of thought. People really cease to think when they have been long smoking. I have asked Turks repeatedly what they have been thinking of during their long smoking reveries, and they replied, 'Of nothing.' I could not remind them of a single idea having occupied their minds; and in the consideration of the Turkish character there is no more curious circumstance connected with their moral condition. The opinion of Locke, that the soul of a waking man is never without thought, because it is the condition of being awake, is, in my mind, contradicted by the waking somnambulism, if I may so express myself, of a Moslem."*

We concede that Dr Madden might find in England, in Germany, and in Holland, many good smokers, who would make excellent Moslems in his sense, and who at the close of long tobacco reveries are utterly unconscious and innocent of a single thought. Yet we restrict our faith in his opinion to the simple belief, that tobacco, with a haze such as its smoke creates, tends to soften down and assuage the intensity of all inner thoughts or external impressions which affect the feelings, and thus to create a still and peaceful repose-such a quiet rest as one fancies might be found in the hazy distance of Turner's landscapes. We deny that, in Europeans in general, smoking puts an end to intellectual exertion. In moderation, our own experience is, that it sharpens and strengthens it; and we doubt very much if those learned Teutonic Professors, who smoke all day, whose studies are perpetually obscured by the fumes of the weed, and who are even said to smoke during sleep, would willingly, or with good temper, concede that the heavy tomes which in yearly thousands appear at the Leipsic book fair, have all been written after their authors had "really ceased to think." Still it is probably true, and may be received as the characteristic of tobacco among narcotics, that its major and first effect is to assuage, and allay, and soothe the system in general; its minor, and second, or after effect, to excite and invigorate, and, at the same time, give steadiness and fixity to the powers of thought.

The active substances, or chemical ingredients of tobacco or tobacco smoke, by which these effects upon the system are produced, are three in

number. The first is a volatile oil, of which about two grains can be ob+, tained from a pound of leaves, by distilling them with water. This oil or fat "is solid, has the odour of tobacco, and a bitter taste. It excites in the tongue and throat a sensation similar to that of tobacco smoke; and, when swallowed, gives rise to giddiness, nausea, and an inclination to vomit." Small as the quantity is, therefore, which is present in the leaf, this substance must be regarded as one of the ingredients upon which the effects of tobacco depend.

The second is a volatile alkali, as it is called by chemists, which is also obtained by a form of distillation. The substance is liquid, has the odour of tobacco, an acrid burning taste, and is possessed of narcotic and highly poisonous qualities. In this latter quality it is scarcely inferior to Prussic acid. The proportion of this substance contained in the leaf varies from 3 to 8 per cent, so that he who smokes a hundred grains of tobacco may draw into his mouth from three to eight grains of one of the most subtle of all known poisons. It will not be doubted, therefore, that some of the effects of tobacco are to be ascribed to this peculiar substance.

The third is an oil-an empyreumatic oil, it is called-which does not exist ready formed in the natural leaf, but is produced along with other substances during the burning. This is supposed to be "the juice of cursed hebenon," described by Shakspeare as a distilment.* It is acrid, disagreeable to the taste, narcotic, and so poisonous that a single drop on the tongue of a cat causes immediate convulsions, and in two minutes death.

Of these three active ingredients contained in tobacco smoke, the Turkish and Indian pipes, in which the smoke is made to pass slowly through water, arrest a large proportion, and therefore convey the air to the mouth in a milder form. The reservoir of the German meerschaums retains the grosser portions of the oils, &c., produced by burning; and the long stem of the Russian pipe has a similar effect. The Dutch and English pipes retain less; while the cigar, especially when smoked to the end, discharges everything into the mouth of the smoker, and, when he retains the saliva, gives him the benefit of the united action of all the three narcotic substances together. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who have been accustomed to smoke cigars, especially such as are made of strong tobacco, should find any other pipe both tame and tasteless, except the short black cutty, which has lately come into favour again among inveterate smokers.

The chewer of tobacco, it will be understood from the above description of its active ingredients, is not exposed to the effects of the oil which is produced during the burning. The natural oil and the volatile alkali are the substances which act upon him. The taker of snuff is in the same condition. But his drug is still milder than that of the chewer, inasmuch as the artificial drying or roasting to which the tobacco is subjected in the preparation of snuff, drives off a portion of the natural volatile oil, and a large part of the volatile alkali, and thus renders it considerably less active than the natural leaf.

In all the properties by which tobacco is characterised, the produce of different countries and districts is found to exhibit very sensible differences. At least eight or ten species, and numerous varieties, of the plant are cultivated; and the leaf of each of these, even where they are all grown in the same locality, is found to exhibit sensible peculiarities. To these climate and soil add each its special effects; while the period of growth at which the leaves are gathered, and the way in which they are dried or cured, exercise a well-known influence on the quality of the crop. To these causes of diversity is owing, for the most

part, the unlike estimation in which Virginian, Cuban, Brazilian, Peruvian, East Indian, Persian, and Turkish tobaccos are held in the market.

The chemist explains all the known and well-marked diversities of quality and flavour in the unadulterated leaf, by showing that each recognised variety of tobacco contains the active ingredients of the leaf in a peculiar form or proportion; and it is interesting to find science in his hands first rendering satisfactory reasons for the decisions of taste. Thus, he has shown that the natural volatile oil does not exist in the green leaf, but is formed during the drying, and hence the reason why the mode of curing affects the strength and quality of the dried leaf. He has also shown that the proportion of the poisonous alkali (nicotin) is smallest (2 per cent) in the best Havannah, and largest (7 per cent) in the Virginian tobacco, and hence a natural and sound reason for the preference given to the former by the smokers of cigars.

As to the lesser niceties of flavour, this probably depends upon other odoriferous ingredients not so active in their nature, or so essential to the leaf as those already mentioned. The leaves of plants, in this respect, are easily affected by a variety of circumstances, and especially by the nature of the soil they grow in, and of the manure applied to them. Even to the grosser senses of us Europeans, it is known, for example, that pigs' dung carries its gout into the tobacco raised by its means. But the more refined organs of the Druses and Maronites of Mount Lebanon readily recognise, by the flavour of their tobacco, the kind of manure employed in its cultivation, and esteem, above all others, that which has been aided in its growth by the droppings of the goat.

But in countries where high duties upon tobacco hold out a temptation to frand, artificial flavours are given by various forms of adulteration. "Saccharine matter (molasses, sugar, honey, &c.), which is the principal adulterating ingredient, is said to be used both for the purpose of adding to the weight of the tobacco, and of rendering it more agreeable. Vegetable leaves (as those of rhubarb and the beech), mosses, bran, the sprout

ings of malt, beet-root dregs, liquorice, terra japonica, rosin, yellow ochre, fullers' earth, sand, saltpetre, common salt, sal-ammoniac"-such is a list of the substances which have been detected in adulterated tobacco. How many more may be in daily use for the purpose, who can tell? Is it surprising, therefore, that we should meet with manufactured tobacco possessing a thousand different flavours for which the chemistry of the natural leaf can in no way account?

There are two other circumstances in connection with the history of tobacco, which, because of their economical and social bearings, are possessed of much interest.

First, Every smoker must have observed the quantity of ash he has occasion to empty out of his pipe, or the large nozzle he knocks off from time to time from the burning end of his cigar. This incombustible part is equal to one-fourth or one-fifth of the whole weight of the dried leaf, and consists of earthy or mineral matter which the tobacco plant has drawn from the soil on which it has grown. Every ton, when dried, of the tobacco leaf which is gathered, carries off, therefore, from four to five hundredweight of this mineral matter from the soil. And as the substances of which the mineral matter consists are among those which are at once most necessary to vegetation, and least abundant even in fertile soils, it will readily be understood that the frequent growth and removal of tobacco from the same field must gradually affect its fertility, and sooner or later exhaust it.

It has been, and still is, to a great extent, the misfortune of many tobacco-growing regions, that this simple deduction was unknown and unheeded. The culture has been continued year after year upon virgin soils, till the best and richest were at last wearied and worn out, and patches of deserted wilderness are at length seen where tobacco plantations formerly extended and flourished. Upon the Atlantic borders of the United States of America, the best known modern instances of such exhausting culture are to be found.

It is one of the triumphs of the chemistry of this century, that it has ascertained what the land loses by such imprudent treatment-what is the cause, therefore, of the barrenness that befalls it, and by what new management its ancient fertility may be again restored.

Second, It is melancholy to think that the gratification of this narcotic instinct of man should in some countries-and especially in North America, Cuba, and Brazil-have become a source of human misery in its most aggravated forms. It was long ago remarked of the tobacco culture by President Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, that "it is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness. Those employed in it are in a continued state of exertion beyond the powers of nature to support. Little food of any kind is raised by them, so that the men and animals on these farms are badly fed, and the earth is rapidly impoverished." But these words do not convey to the English reader a complete idea of the misery they allude to. The men employed in the culture, who suffer the "infinite wretchedness," are the slaves on the plantations. And it is melancholy, as we have said, to think that the gratification of the passion for tobacco should not only have been an early stimulus. to the extension of slavery in the United States, but should continue still to be one of the props by which it is sustained. The exports of tobacco from the United States in the year ending June 1850, were valued at ten millions of dollars. This sum European smokers pay for the maintenance of slavery in these states, besides what they contribute for the same purpose to Cuba and Brazil. The practice of smoking is in itself, we believe, neither a moral nor a social evil; it is merely the gratification of a natural and universal, as it is an innocent instinct. Pity that such evils should be permitted to flow from what is in itself so harmless!

II. The Hop, which may now be called the English narcotic, was brought from the Low Countries, and

is not known to have been used in malt liquor in this country till after the year 1524, in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1850 the quantity of hops grown in England was 21,668 tons, paying a duty of £270,000. This is supposed to be a larger quantity than is grown in all the world besides. Only 98 tons were exported in that year; while, on the other hand, 320 tons were imported, so that the home consumption amounted to 21,886 tons, or 49 millions of pounds; being two-thirds more than the weight of the tobacco which we yearly consume. It is the narcotic substance, therefore, of which England not only grows more and consumes more than all the world besides, but of which Englishmen consume more than they do of any other substance of the same class.

And who that has visited the hop grounds of Kent and Surrey in the flowering season, will ever forget the beauty and grace of this charming plant? Climbing the tall poles, and circling them with its clasping tendrils, it hides the formality and stiffness of the tree that supports it among the exuberant profusion of its clustering flowers. Waving and drooping in easy motion with every tiny breath that stirs them, and hanging in curved wreaths from pole to pole, the hopbines dance and glitter beneath the bright English sun-the picture of a true English vineyard, which neither the Rhine nor the Rhone can equal, and only Italy, where her vines climb the freest, can surpass.

The hop "joyeth in a fat and fruitful ground," as old Gerard hath it (1596). "It prospereth the better by manuring." And few spots surpass, either in natural fertility or in artificial richness, the hop lands of Surrey, which lie along the out-crop of the green sand measures in the neighbourhood of Farnham. Naturally rich to an extraordinary degree in the mineral food of plants, the soils in this locality have been famed for centuries for the growth of hops; and with a view to this culture alone, at the present day, the best portions sell as high as £500 an acre. And the highest Scotch farmer-the most liberal of

manure will find himself outdone by the hop-growers of Kent and Surrey. An average of ten pounds an acre for manure over a hundred acres of hops, makes this branch of farming the most liberal, the most remarkable, and the most expensive of any in England.

This mode of managing the hop, and the peculiar value and rarity of hop land, were known very early. They form parts of its history which were probably imported with the plant itself. Tusser, who lived in Henry VIII.'s time, and in the reigns of his three children, in his Points of Husbandry thus speaks of the hop:"Choose soil for the hop of the rottenest mould,

Well-doonged and wrought as a garden-plot should:

Not far from the water (but not overfloune),
This lesson well noted, is meet to be knowne.
The sun in the south, or else southlie and
west,

Is joy to the hop as welcommed ghest ;
But wind in the north, or else northerly east,
To hop is as ill as fray in a feast.

Meet plot for a hop-yard, once found as is told,
Make thereof account, as of jewel of gold;
Now dig it and leave it, the sun for to burne,
And afterwards fense it, to serve for that

turne.

The hop for his profit, I thus do exalt :
It strengtheneth drink, and favoureth malt;
And being well brewed, long kep it will last,
And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast. "

The hops of commerce consist of the female flowers and seeds of the humulus lupulus, or common hop plant. Their principal consumption is in the manufacture of beer, to which they give a pleasant, bitter, aromatic flavour, and tonic properties. Part of the soporific quality of beer also is ascribed to the hops, and they are supposed by their chemical properties to check the tendency to become sour. The active principles in the hop consist of a volatile oil, and a peculiar bitter principle to which the name of lupulin is given.

When the hop flowers are distilled with water, they yield as much as eight per cent of their weight of a volatile oil, which has a brownish yellow colour, a strong smell of hops, and a slightly bitter taste. In this "oil of hops" it has hitherto been supposed that a portion of the narcotic influence of the flowers resided, but