SHORTER ARTICLES AND CORRESPONDENCE 



JUVENILE SUBSTITUTES FOR SMOKING TOBACCO 



Nearly every boy has the desire to smoke and while many 

 perhaps lie-in with tobacco itself, many more probably experi- 

 ment with other substances of vegetable origin which burn well 

 and yield readily the desired smoke so that the appearances, at 

 least, of the act of smoking are produced. The knowledge of 

 such .substitutes in a particular locali1\ is usually extensive and 

 widespread, being the subject of serious conference and debate 

 among the youthful inhabitants. Very little, if any, of this 

 tradition is recorded, and it seems perhaps a matter of some 

 botanical interest that it should be. In some ways, the practise 

 of boys in thus providing a substitute bears a singular re- 

 semblance to that of the less civilized peoples or communities 

 more or less isolated from tobacco-producing centers. 



My own juvenile knowledge was obtained in eastern Connecti- 

 cut between thirty and forty years ago. In those days there 

 were still many umbrellas with rattan (Calamus rotangf) ribs. 

 Short pieces of these, being porous, on being set afire at one end, 

 a matter of some difficulty, allowed the smoke to be drawn 

 through in sufficient quantities to be blown out through the 

 mouth, but the smoke was hot and biting and the rattan was kept 

 alight with difficulty. Later, I learned the virtues of the more 

 generally used substitutes, hay-seed, sweet-fern and mullein. 

 The hay-seed was usually procured from the floors of the hay 

 barns and consisted of the more or less ripened florets of timothy 

 (Phleum pratense) and redtop (Agrostis sp.) It was usually 

 more or less carefully sifted and smoked in a clay pipe or packed 

 in paper shells to imitate cigarettes. This was before the days 

 of the universal use of hand-rolled cigarettes and no such papers 

 were available, so we used a fairly stiff white paper, rolled it 

 about a cylindrical piece of wood of desired length and diameter, 

 fastening the free edge by means of home-made starch paste. 

 When these were dry, they were carefully stuffed with the hay- 

 seed and the ends carefully, if not skilfully, folded in. Very 

 commonly, however, the ends came undone during the smoking 

 and the fine hay-seed made a disagreeable mouthful. A more 

 682 



