18 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
tinue to occupy his present position for the benefit of the Society 
and the credit of those who belong to it. 
Since we last separated, death has removed from our number one 
of the oldest and most honoured of our members. Dr. Hearder 
had been a lecturing member of this Society for upwards of twenty 
years. It is unnecessary for me to speak at length of his varied 
acquirements in this Address, as a memoir of his life will appear in 
our ' ' Transactions." 
I took occasion, when occupying this chair at our last Conver- 
sazione, to make some observations on the question of the use of 
opium in China. My object was to bring before the gentlemen 
present a matter of some importance ; viz., the relation between the 
condition of the people who use this drug, and its extraordinary 
demand in China. Is there any reason to be found in the social 
life or circumstances of the people to account for this demand ? I 
should not have again alluded to this subject had I been quite 
certain that I was not misunderstood on the former occasion by some 
of those who heard my words, and by others who reasoned from the 
reports of the address. But as I have received several remonstrances 
from the outside, and was also appealed to from within, as to the 
utility of mooting so barren a question, I feel it right to re-express 
my conviction that there are circumstances in the social life of 
the Chinese which partly at least account for this extraordinary 
craving ; and if so, it appears to me that remedial measures might 
be suggested to meet the necessity and stay the progress of the evil. 
That I do not stand alone in this assumption is evident from a 
paper in the China Review (No. 6, vol. iv. p. 379), where we find 
the following remarks made by Mr. Charles T. Gardner, an old 
resident in the country. He is reviewing a work called " Chinese 
Sketches," by Mr. Herbert A. Giles, of Her Majesty's Consular 
Service. In the doing so he says : 
" The poor Chinese can only get vegetables. The opium smoke 
which introduces the morphia in its more rarefied, least poisonous, 
and most effective manner into his system, makes him digest 
slower, and acts in the same way as prolongation of his intestines 
would. Again, opium- smoking is a preservative against miasma ; 
in Lincolnshire and other places where miasma prevails, the people 
take to opium-eating instead of dram-drinking. Why ? because 
experience, the best of mistresses, teaches them that opium is a 
sovereign specific against low fevers. Opium-smoking is as less 
