ADULTERATIONS. 7 1 



Who their insatiate pride seek chiefly to maiutaine 



By that which only serves to uses vile and vaine : 



Which our plaine fathers earste would have accounted sinne, 



Before the costly coach, and silken stock came in ; 



Before that Indian weed so strongly was imbrac't ; 



Wherein such mighty summes we prodigally waste." 



The popularity of smoking, naturally and speedily led 

 to adulterations ; and one of them is noted in Ben Jon- 

 son's Bartholomew Faire, where Ursula, the vendor of 

 roast pig, a lady who " can hut hold life and soule to- 

 gether" with drink "and a whiff of tobacco," orders her 

 tapster to look to her interests; "Look too't, sirrah, j t ou 

 were best ! three pence a pipe full, I will ha' made of all 

 my whole halfe pound of tabacco, and a quarter of a 

 pound of coltsfoot, mixt with it too, to eke it out." 



Dr. Barclay, of Edinburgh, in his Nepenthes (1G14), 

 notes that " avarice and greedines of gaine have 

 moved the marchants to apparell some European 

 plants with Indian coats, and to enstal them in shops 

 as righteous and legitimate tabacco. Some others 

 have tabacco from Florida indeede, but because either 

 it is exhausted of spiritualitie, or the radicall humour 

 is spent, and wasted, or it hath gotten moysture by the 

 way, or it hath bene dried for expedition in the sunne, 

 or carried too negligently ; they sophisticate and farde 

 the same in sundrie sortes, with black spice, galanga, 

 aqua vitse, Spanish wine, anise seedes, oyle of Spicke, 

 and such like." Armin, in his Nest of Ninnies (1608), 

 speaks of tobacco " sophisticated to taste strong." * 



* Stephens, in his Essays and Characters, 1615, speaks of one who 

 "deceives with his c»mmodity worse than a tobacco-man." 



