The Beginning of Smoking 19 



reference actually being made to Dr. Everard's 

 treatise on tobacco, published in 1659. Similarly 

 Dr. Yates discovered on an ancient Egyptian tomb- 

 stone what he believed to represent a party of men 

 smoking ; in reality it is a picture of glass-blowers at 

 work. Eulia Effendi, the Turkish traveller, stated 

 that he found a pipe embedded in a biiilding con- 

 structed before the time of Mahomet, it being asserted 

 by some that it was unlawful for true Moslems to 

 smoke. By this discovery, however, the conscience 

 of the orthodox was satisfied, Eulia proving the 

 authenticity of the find by the assertion that the pipe 

 smelt of tobacco ! Against these wild assertions it is 

 merely necessary to point out that in the ' Arabian 

 Nights,' that mirror of Eastern life, no reference is 

 made to smoking, and that in the seventeenth century 

 smoking was prohibited in Turkey, Persia and India 

 under penalty of death. 



Many antiquaries have laboured to prove that the 

 smoking of herbs — grey lichen and coltsfoot — ^was 

 common in this country in the times of the Romans 

 and ancient Britons, as well as the later English. The 

 discovery of pipes of bronze, iron and clay in com- 

 pany with Roman remains has been cited as proof. 

 But subterranean deposits become strangely mixed ; 

 coins of the Stuarts and a tobacco-stopper of the 

 reign of George II. have been found with Roman 

 pottery and weapons. It is as absurd to suppose 

 that the Romans used the Merry Monarch's coins as 

 that they pressed down their coltsfoot-loaded pipes 

 with a tobacco-stopper of George II. In 1784 a 

 grave of great age was unearthed at Bannockstown, in 



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