MISCELLANEA. 
631 
War Office, Pall Mall. Sept. 25, I860. 
VETERINARY DEPARTMENT. 
Thomas Channon, Gent., to be Acting Veterinary Sur¬ 
geon. 
MISCELLANEA. 
TOBACCO. 
Theologists have pronounced it an invention of Satan, 
which destroyed the efficacy of fasting, a point so much dis¬ 
puted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Coun¬ 
cillors forbade it to all ecclesiastics under control. Pope 
Urban VIII and Innocent XI punished the use of it with 
excommunication; Sultan Amurat IV, with the most cruel 
kinds of deaths; Schah Abbas II, with penalties almost as 
severe; Michael Feodoravitch TouriefF ordered a bastinado 
for the first offence, cutting off the nose for the second, and 
the head for the third offence ; Prussia and Denmark simply 
prohibited ; and James of England fulminated a “ counter¬ 
blast” against it; and yet it is (C the most popular plant in the 
world ” in our day. 
HOW MUCH TOBACCO IS USED. 
The present annual production of tobacco is estimated to be 
about 4,000,000,000 pounds—four billions of pounds ! this is 
all smoked, chewed, or snuffed. Suppose it all made into cigars, 
one hundred to the pound, it would produce 400,000,000,000. 
Four hundred billions of cigars ! These cigars at the usual 
length, four inches, if joined together, would form one con¬ 
tinuous cigar 25,252,520 miles long, which would encircle 
the earth more than one thousand times. Cut up into equal 
pieces, 240,000 miles in length, there would be over one 
thousand cigars, which would extend from the centre of the 
earth to the centre of the moon. Put these cigars into boxes 
10 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 3 inches high, 100 to the 
box, it would require 4,000,000,000 boxes. Pile up these 
boxes in a solid mass, and they would occupy a space of 
