96 ST NICOTINE 



chain ; our knowledge is enlarged, and we recognise the 

 unity of our race. Needless then to say that it is in no 

 narrow spirit of mere curiosity that the wise men of Europe 

 have devoted much labour and learning to the task of 

 discovering if the habit of tobacco-smoking, now so 

 common all over the world, existed in Eastern countries 

 before the discovery of America by Columbus. 



It is justly claimed for the subject that it possesses 

 interest for a much larger class than professed ethnologists; 

 that it is invested with an absorbing fascination for every 

 earnest student of the history and habits of mankind. For 

 it is maintained that nothing but a deep-seated craving in 

 the nature of human beings for narcotics and stimulants 

 can explain the immediate, rapid, and over-mastering 

 success with which the passion for tobacco spread over 

 the world after its introduction into Europe by the 

 Spaniards. That this should have been so, seems to point 

 directly to the conclusion that before the discovery of the 

 New World the tobacco-plant and the habit of smoking its 

 leaves were unknown elsewhere. Let it be remembered, 

 however, that we have to take into account the farther 

 East, more particularly China, the Cathay of our fore- 

 fathers, who had found every approach leading into the 

 interior jealously guarded against intrusion from the 

 barbarian of the outer world. 



Scattered through the pages of ancient historians and 

 naturalists are some curious allusions to a practice 

 occasionally indulged in of inhaling the fumes of burning 

 vegetable substances, either for pleasure's sake or for 

 medicinal purposes. A few of these may suffice to in- 

 dicate the shifts men were put to in remote times in 

 order to appease their longing for narcotics of one kind or 

 another. 



