OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 251 



Osnabruck, which proved that the ancients smoked. M. Keferstein, in his " Celtic 

 Antiquities," boldly declares that the Celts smoked. Klemtu, in his " History of 

 Christian Europe," states that the smoking of intoxicating plants was known to 

 the Scythians and Africans long before the introduction of tobacco into Europe. 

 Herodotus, in speaking of the Scythians, does not go quite so far, but mentions 

 that the people spread hemp seed on red-hot stones and inhaled the vapour sent 

 forth. It is therefore thought by Baron de Bonstetten that the pipes of which he 

 gives the drawing were used before the introduction of tobacco into Europe.* 



This is by no means the first time that classic authorities have 

 been quoted in proof of the antiquity of smoking. In the Anthologia 

 Hibernica,f for example, a learned treatise aims to prove, on the autho- 

 rity of Herdotus (lib. I. Sec. 36,) Strabo, (lib. vii. 296), Pomponius 

 Mela, (2.) and Solinus (c. 15,) that the northern nations of Europe were 

 acquainted with tobacco, or an herb of similar properties, long before 

 the discovery of America, and that they smoked it through small 

 tubes. Pliny has also been produced to show that Coltsfoot 

 {tussilago farfara, a mucilagenous and bitter herbaceous plant, the 

 leaves of which were once in great favor for their supposed medicinal 

 qualities,) furnished a substitute for the American plant which 

 superseded this and other fancied supplies of the ancients' pipes. 

 Speaking of that plant as a remedy for a cough, (Nat. Hist. xxvi. 16.) 

 Pliny says : — " Hujus aridse cum radice fumus per arundinem, haus- 

 tus et devoratus, veterem sanare dicitur tussim ; sed in singulos 

 haustus passum gustandum est." This, however, is nothing more 

 than a proof of the antiquity of a process of applying the 

 fumes or steam of certain plants, for medicinal purposes, which is 

 recommended in a treatise on " the Vertues of Colefoot" in the 

 Historie of Plantes, by Rembert Dodoens, translated and published 

 in England in 1578, " The parfume of the dryed leaves" says he, 

 " layde upon quicke coles, taken into the mouth through the pipe of 

 a funnell, or tunnell, helpeth suche as are troubled with the short- 

 ness of winde, and fetche their breath thicke or often." So far, how- 



* Quoted in the North British Daily Mail, July 24th, 1856, but without naming the 

 original source. It was copied into the Illustrated Times., of July 26th, and by other 

 periodicals, but there also without reference to the original authority. In this case I 

 cannot doubt that the writer who thus'loosely quotes, or misquotes, the "Archaeology of 

 Scotland" does it at second hand, from Dr. Bruce. 



t Vol. I., p. 352, quoted in Notes and Queries, X, 48. The subject has been handled in all 

 lights, and each view of the questions it involves has found its defenders in this useful 

 periodical,— doubly useful to those who are cut off from the great public libraries. In N. 

 and Q., vol. II., p. 154, much curious information is concisely given relative to the assumed 

 use of tobacco, anciently, and in the East. Ibid p. 150. Its Eastern antiquity finds a contra- 

 diction on the authority of Lane, and still more of Dr. Meyer of Konigsberg, who dis- 

 covered in the works of an old Hindostanee physician, a passage in which tobacco is distinctly 

 stated to have been introduced into India, by the Frank nations, in the year 160tf. 



