SATIRES ON SNUFF. ' 285 



Lord Stanhope once made an estimate of the time 

 wasted by a snuff-taker : — " if we suppose this practice 

 to be persisted in for forty years, two entire years of 

 the snuff-taker's life will be dedicated to tickling his 

 nose, and two more to blowing it." He ends by 

 declaring, that " a proper application of the time and 

 money thus lost to the public, might constitute a fund 

 for the discharge of the national debt." 



The following outrageous attempt at satirising the 

 habits of snuff-taking to excess, appeared in the London 

 Journal about thirty years ago : " A provincial paper 

 says, that a gentleman in Devonshire has invented 

 what he calls a snuff-pistol ; it has two barrels, and 

 being applied to the nose, upon touching a spring 

 under them with the fore-finger, both nostrils are 

 instantly filled, and a sufficient quantity driven up the 

 head to last the whole day !" 



We will conclude with a few remarks on snuff-boxes, 

 native and foreign, to complete those scattered through 

 this chapter. And first of the primitive snuff-mills. 

 Of these a writer in the New York Literary World, 

 for 1834 gives the following account. He says : — 



" Old Brazilian Indians were the fathers of snuff, 

 and its best fabricators. Though counted the least 

 refined, or in other words, the most savage of 

 Americans, in one respect their taste was as pure as 

 that of the fashionable world of the West. Their 

 snuff has never been equalled, nor in simplicity 

 and originality their implements for making and 

 taking it." 



