44 TOBACCO IN EUROPE. 



of these writers has attempted to explain the extraor- 

 dinary fact of the total silence of all persons as to the 

 custom in Europe, either in ancient or modern times. 

 It is in fact not till long after its European advent, in 

 comparatively modern times, that we meet with these 

 assertions and conjectures, which presuppose the 

 monstrous improbability that the world had smoked 

 on unwittingly for some three thousand years, and 

 then accepted the " weed " from the aborigines of 

 America as a new gift ! 



The proper name of the herb is also a subject of 

 discussion, but the weight of evidence is certainly not 

 in favour of the present one so extensively adopted in 

 Europe. The name tabaco certainly appears, from the 

 testimony of the oldest authors, to be that applied to 

 the tube used by the Indians to inhale the smoke; and 

 that the plant itself bore the name of yoli, petun, 



Egypt may pass uncontradicted, as the author of this work has seen in the 

 collection of drawings formed by a late distinguished antiquary to illus- 

 trate Norfolk, one representing a carved panel, of the age of Edward the 

 Third, and from the mouth of one figure a pipe comfortably depends. 

 The Egyptian pipe may have been added to an old figure in a similar 

 manner by some idler — or, what is more probable, the picture may have 

 represented glass-blowers at work, as engraved in Wilkinson's Egypt, 

 vol. iii. p. 89, which on a cursory glance looks exactly like a smoking party. 

 Irish antiquaries have also seen native instances as old or apparently 

 older, but no notice has been taken of the ' ' ingenious artists " who have 

 added "the little tube of magic power" to these really extraordinary 

 "ancient monuments." China, that very safe country, where all investi- 

 gators repose when their labours in every other are refuted, is now the 

 "happy home " whence the use of tobacco is declared to have emanated for 

 the benefit of "outer barbarians." The determination to find what is 

 sought for in all these theories is the most amusing part of them ; and the 

 manner in which facts are ignored, for the stultification of fancies, would 

 make a curious chapter on the idiosyncracies of authors. 



