130 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



smoked the rolled leaf (cigars), chewed it, and took it 

 as snuff. 



It has been suggested that in Asia smoking of some 

 kind of dried herbs may have been a habit before 

 tobacco was introduced since even Herodotus states 

 that the Scythians were accustomed to inhale the smoke 

 of burning weeds, and showed their enjoyment of it by 

 howling like dogs ! But investigation does not support 

 the view that anything corresponding to individual 

 or personal " smoking " existed. " Bang " or " hashish " 

 (the Indian hemp) was not " smoked," but swallowed as 

 a kind of paste before the introduction of tobacco- 

 smoking in the East as we may gather from the 

 stories of the " Arabian Nights " although the practice 

 of smoking hemp (which is the chief constituent of 

 " bang ") and also of smoking the narcotic herb 

 "henbane," has now been established. Opium was, 

 and is, eaten in India, not " smoked." The " smoking " 

 of opium is a Chinese invention of the eighteenth 

 century. 



The Oriental hookah suggests a history anterior to 

 the use of tobacco, but nothing is known of it. The 

 word signifies a cocoanut-shell, and is applied to the jar 

 (sometimes actually a cocoanut) containing perfumed 

 water, through which smoke from a pipe, fixed so as to 

 dip into the water, is drawn by a long tube with 

 mouthpiece. It seems possible that this apparatus was 

 in use for inhaling perfume by means of bubbles of air 

 drawn through rose-water or such liquids, before 

 tobacco-smoking was introduced, and that the tobacco- 

 pipe and the perfume-jar were then combined. But 

 travellers before the year 1600 do not mention the 

 existence of the hookah in Persia or in India, though 

 as soon as tobacco came into use this apparatus is 

 described by Floris, in 1614, and by Olearius, in 1633, 

 and by all subsequent travellers. 



The conclusion to which careful inquiry has led is 



