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MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



ently blew out again at tLeir nostrils — so that ] this plant ihat they seemed as it weredegen- 

 Englishmeu's bodies were so delighted with ! erated into barbanans.' " 



At that rate, what a number of mside barbarians we must have here in New- 

 York, where, according to the great statistical writer IvIcGregor, ten thousand 

 dollars' worth of cigars are smoked every day ! to say nothing of the quantity 

 that ffoes into the mouth and nose ! 



Dr. Venner, in a work entitled Via Rec- 

 ta ad Vi'avi Longam, pnblijhed in London 

 in 1638, gives a brief summary of the injuries 

 done by tobacco : " It drieth the brain, dim- 

 meth the sij^ht, vitiateth the smell, hurteth 

 the stomach, destroyeth the concoction, dis- 

 turbeth the humors and spirits, corriipteth 

 the breath, induceth a trembling of the limbs. 



exsicateth the windpipe, lungs and liver, an- 

 noyelli the milt, scoiclieth the heart, and 

 causeth the blood to be adusted. In a word, 

 it overlhroweth the spirits, perv(|rteth the 

 imderstanding, and cunfoundeth the senses, 

 with sudden astonishment and sti^iditie of 

 the whole body." 



Thus, more than 200 years ago, was denounced the great staple which our 

 Prince George's friends persist in cultivating. If half the learned Doctor says of 

 it were true, one might suppose that Malthus himself could desire no more 

 effectual check on the readiness of mankind to follow that one most heeded of 

 all God's commandments. But, like old Count Cornaro's Via Recta ad Vitam 

 Longam, we apprehend it will ever be found much easier to read than to follow it. 



The priests of some tribes swallowed the smoke of tobacco to excite in them 

 a spirit of divination, and when recovered from the fit of stupor into which it 

 threw them, they asserted they had held a conference with the devil, and from 

 him had learned to predict events. Their " Medicine Men " pretended to be in- 

 spired in like manner with a knowledge of diseases and their cure. The rich 

 indulged in it, we are told, as a luxury of the highest order, and the poor, as 

 now, gave themselves up to it as a solace for the miseries of life. In the South- 

 ern States, now, in their almost universal solicitude for the comfort of their 

 slaves, planters provide for them a regular supply of tobacco. 



So excessive became the use of it that in many countries its consumption was 

 forbidden or restrained by public authority. So excited against it was the First 

 James, of England, that he not only denounced it in his book, " The Tobacco 

 Blast," but expressly prohibited the planters of Virginia from cultivating more 

 than 100 pounds on any one plantation, and vehemently warned his subjects not 

 to " sin against God and harm their own persons and goods, and render them- 

 selves scorned and contemned by strangers who should come among them, by 

 persevering in a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, and baneful 

 to the brain," Of such sumptuary laws and arbitrary interference with private 

 habits and individual economy and freedom of action, have we not even yet some 

 unavailing if not barbarous relics on our statute books? In this, be it understood, 

 we by no means refer to the municipal law, still in force in a neighboring city, 

 against any man caught, Jlagraiite delicto, smoking in the s'reet — extending their 

 magisterial benedictions against this pride of Blaryland industry even farther 

 than Pope Urban the Vlllth, who confined his excommunication to those only 

 who should impiously diffuse the smoke of tobacco in the churches ! In Constan- 

 tinople the anti-tobacco laws were yet more severe, for there the Turk who was 

 found smoking was paraded publicly, with the pipe transfixed through his nose — 

 a more appropriate punishment, one would think, for such as belong to the nu- 

 merous and fashionable tribe oi snuffers. 



In the earliest record of Harvard University, as is set forth in the Memoir be- 

 fore us, there is a regulation that " No scholar shall take tobacco unless permit- 

 ted by the President, with the consent of their parents and guardians, and on good 



(G20) 



