PREFACE. 



Nearly four centuries ago the Old World learned from 

 the New the use of tobacco, and the lesson has been so well 

 learned that smoking is now common everywhere. 



The pipes from the pre-historic mounds of the United 

 States, and from the ancient cities of Mexico, prove the 

 extreme antiquity of the practice ; while its connection with 

 religious, political, and social usages gives additional interest 

 to all that can be known about it. 



Special interest in the subject arises from the fact that all 

 savage and semi-civilized peoples have lavished their highest 

 skill and most characteristic art upon the construction and 

 decoration of their pipes, and nearly the same may be said 

 of nations higher in the scale of civilization. 



The decoration of pipes and of smoking appliances 

 generally thus adds a new chapter to the "Grammar of 

 Ornament." 



Until about twenty years ago, no attempt had been made 

 to bring together what might be called an ethnographic 

 collection of objects connected with the use of tobacco in 

 its various forms — of pipes of all kinds, some being so 

 unlike our notion of what a pipe ought to be that even the 

 most experienced European smoker would be puzzled by 

 them — of fire-strikers for smokers — of snuff mills and snuff 

 rasps, by which people in earlier times made their own snuff 

 — of snuff bottles in all their wonderful variety of style and 

 material — of snuff boxes and many other things which 

 illustrate the use of tobacco. 



The collection that was then attempted includes all these 

 objects, and also the whole Uterature of tobacco. It was 

 begun as the recreation of a busy life to a large extent 



