ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING m 



remote (millions of years) that Europe can only be conceived 

 of as primeval forest, and its inhabitants as barely emerging 

 from their protoplasmic swamps. It is, moreover, a 

 country of fantastic oddities, of topsy-turvy notions of the 

 proprieties of every-day life ; where you are constantly 

 meeting with gentlemen in petticoats and ladies in trousers, 

 the ladies smoking and the gentlemen fanning themselves : 

 where ladies of quality may be seen toddling like animated 

 walking-sticks, while stout fellows sit indoors trimming dainty 

 head-dresses for them. Go outside the city and you find 

 greybeards playing shuttlecock with their feet or flying 

 curious kites, and others chirruping and chuckling to their 

 pet birds which they have brought out to take the air, 

 while groups of youths gravely look on regarding these 

 juvenile pastimes of their elders with becoming approval. 



Early in the course of European adventure in the far 

 East, travellers who, under various disguises had succeeded 

 in penetrating into the interior of China, found in some 

 provinces the cultivation of tobacco ranking among the 

 foremost of their agricultural productions. Bell, in his 

 Travels in Asia (Pinkerton's Edition, 1811), speaking of 

 China, says : ' I also saw great plantations of tobacco which 

 they call " Tharr," and which yield considerable profits. 

 It is universally used in smoking in China by persons of all 

 ranks and both sexes; and besides, great quantities are 

 sent to the Mongols, who prefer the Chinese method of 

 preparing it before any other. They make it into gross 

 powder like sawdust, which they keep in a small bag, and 

 fill their little brass pipes out of it without touching it with 

 their fingers. The smoke is very mild, and has a different 

 smell from ours. It is reported that the Chinese have had 

 the use of it for many ages.' Tobacco and the habit of 

 smoking it are mentioned in the annals of the Yuen 



