138 ST NICOTINE 



for planting and reaping necessarily differ according to the 

 varying temperatures of this plutonic region of sulphurous 

 springs and earthrjuakes. Besides the pleasure of smoking, 

 the Japanese, like ourselves, have found many uses for 

 tobacco. For destroying insects on plants, nothing is so 

 effectual as dosing them with a liberal decoction of the 

 juice. Like all other orientals the Japanese have to wage 

 perpetual warfare with those plagues of the flesh that invade 

 every house. In order to check their ravages, he places 

 leaves of the plant in crevices where they usually hide in 

 ambush against the hour for making their nocturnal attack. 

 Mosquitoes, too, are numerous, hungry, and of good size, 

 but in the magic breath of the weed he has found a potent 

 spell which soon overcomes the enemy and lays him low. 

 All he finds it needful to do, is simply to seat himself on his 

 mat in his toy-like house and enjoy the double pleasure of 

 knowing that he is vanquishing the foe while puffing his 

 wee pipe and twirling up pellets to fit the thimble-like bowl. 

 He has discovered, too, that Saint Nicotine is a dispenser of 

 other inestimable blessings. As a healer of many maladies 

 — cutaneous affections, some forms of eye disease, and 

 other like disturbers of a tranquil life — he believes in her 

 implicity, and lotions made of the juice extracted from the 

 leaves of the plant arc in almost daily use among the 

 poorer classes. 



Young Japan having entered with a light heart and buoy- 

 ant into the stream of European life no longer cares for the 

 old ways of his fathers, and finds his chosen smoke in the 

 new paper cigarette fashioned in the Western world. Of these 

 he partakes so liberally that many millions are imported 

 every year, the total value of which, according to the Con- 

 sular Report, comes to about _;^4o,ooo. To such propor- 

 tions has the tobacco industry grown that in Osaka (the 



