346 Opium Smoking among the Celestials . [May, 
in business payments, and tests it with grave deliberation* 
If it be genuine he hands it over to his master. If it be 
counterfeit, he sets it down on the counter before him with 
a solemn grimace of displeasure. His method of testing is 
regarded in commercial circles as infallible; and, as a 
matter of fadt, his decision is uniformly accepted by all 
parties interested in the transaction. But, though a true 
and invaluable servant to his own particular master, it seems 
that his moral character is not altogether irreproachable. 
His deplorable passion for fruit renders him the terror of 
Siamese market gardeners, who find brute force inadequate 
to restrain him from visiting their orchards, and therefore 
have recourse to divers and sundry stratagems, one of which 
is reported to be as successful as it is certainly ingenious. 
A specially aCtive and enterprising ape is captured and care- 
fully sewed up in the skin of a tiger cat. He is then turned 
loose in the orchard of his predilection, and straightway clam- 
bers, as well as he may, incumbered by an unfamiliar gar- 
ment, into the branches of a fruit tree among his unclothed 
fellows. Scarcely do these latter set eyes upon him with all 
his feline terrors thick upon him, when a dreadful panic 
strikes them, and they scramble away with piercing screeches 
and agonised chatterings. Never more do they return to an 
orchard which they believe to be infested by the deadliest 
enemy of their race. The startling intelligence is rapidly 
disseminated throughout the monkey society of the neigh- 
bourhood, and the wily gardener enjoys an absolute immunity 
from depredation for ever afterwards, for the very thought of 
a tiger cat appals the simian soul, and doubtless the tale of 
“ the awful apparition in Ting-tse’s orchard ” is handed 
down in quadrumanous families from generation to genera- 
tion . — Scientific American . 
V. OPIUM SMOKING AMONG THE CELESTIALS. 
By Rich V. Mattison, Ph.G., M.D. 
one passes through the Chinese quarter of San Fran- 
cisco he cannot help being sharply impressed with 
the immense traffic in an article which is seemingly 
part of the very life necessities of this curious people. We 
seem scarcely to pass a shop, whether devoted to the sale of 
