20 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
smoking impairs fertility that we are obliged to suppose there is 
some reason for the belief. "We have visited, sometimes alone, 
sometimes with missionaries, doctors, &c., some thousand opium 
shops in different parts of China ; before we studied the question 
we shared the usual notions on the subject of opium, which gradu- 
ally gave way as we attained further knowledge. A single anec- 
dote will suffice. We were with a missionary whom all who knew, 
revered. We saw in an opium den as miserable a specimen of 
humanity as can be conceived ; it was summer, and the being was 
nearly naked, hardly any flesh was on the bones. 4 There,' said 
our friend, 'you see the effects of opium-smoking, it is needless to 
go farther.' We were not satisfied, and asked, What is your age? 
Answer, Seventy-eight. How long have you smoked opium ? 
Answer, Over fifty years. How long have you had the yin ? 
Answer, About fifty years. Why did you begin to smoke ? Answer, 
Because I was spitting blood." 
I am satisfied with these quotations, as confirming the view which 
I desired to place before my audience on the occasion alluded to. 
I had no desire to canvass the question of the morality or im- 
morality of the 4 'opium trade," as it is called; but I did desire, 
and do desire, to bring before the members of this Society, so many 
of whom are able to judge of the question on its merits, whether 
many of those vices called " national" may not be accounted for 
by peculiar circumstances, and especially social ones ; and whether 
it is right to condemn in unreserved terms those who, in resorting 
to such practices, are but confirming the iron rule — "JNaturam 
expelles furca, tamen usque recurret." 
The vacation season of the year has been, as usual, occupied by 
various congresses of learned or religious societies. The most in- 
teresting to us, in a local point of view, has been the congress, or 
rather congressional tour of the British Archaeological Association. 
There could not be a more interesting county for exploration, in 
connection with the peculiar aims of this association, than the 
county of Cornwall. Essentially British, it is replete with British 
remains. Scarcely a village or parish church but has some tradi- 
tion or legend connected with it, and in many cases there are still 
existing Bude- Stones which carry us back through ages gone, and 
are therefore in every respect fit subjects for the investigation of 
the true archaeologist. 
It is refreshing to find that the old Druidical theory with respect 
