PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS. 41 



for ever tlie pleasure of a habit which he said was only 

 fit to amuse sluggards." 



49. The students attending the American colleges are 

 said to destroy their physical and moral powers by 

 smoking tobacco, so as to unfit them to prosecute their 

 studies, and afterwards to become useful members of 

 society. But we have even the judges on the bench 

 quidding tobacco, as well as the members of parliament, 

 so facetiously described by Dickens in his American 

 Notes for general circulation, wherein he terms Wash- 

 ington the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva. 

 Dr. Budget, in his treatise on tobacco, states, that in 

 America, '^ it is no uncommon circumstance to hear of 

 inquests on the bodies of smokers, especially youths; 

 the ordinary verdict being, *■ died from extreme tobacco 

 smoking.' " 



50. " The pupils of the Polytechnic School in Paris 

 have recently furnished some curious statistics bearing 

 on the tobacco controversy. Dividing the young gen- 

 tlemen of that college into two groups — the smokers 

 and non-smokers — it is shown that the smokers have 

 shown themselves in the various competitive examina- 

 tions far inferior to the others. Not only in the exami- 

 nations on entering the school are the smokers in a lower 

 rank, but in the various ordeals that they have to pass 

 through in a year, the average rank of the smokers had 

 constantly fallen, and not inconsiderably, while the men 

 who did not smoke enjoyed a cerebral atmosphere of the 

 clearest kind." — From the Glohcj also the Duhlin Medi* 

 col Press. 



51. Excessive smoking has had no small share in the 



