ted without tobacco.
The pipe seems as inseparable as the Koran from the follower of Mahomet.

Barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the _Nicotiana
tabacum_ germinated in European soil: now, who shall count the harvests?
Less than three centuries ago, Raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting
smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of Ireland must
be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. A little more than a
century and a half ago, the import into Great Britain was only one
hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reexported:
now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government
a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,--being an annual tax of three
shillings four pence on every soul in the United Kingdom. Nor is the
case of England an exceptional one. The tobacco-zone girdles the globe.
From the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is
consumed on every continent. On every sea it is carried and used by the
mariners of every nation. Its incense rises in every clime, as from one
vast altar dedicated to its worship,--before which ancient holocausts,
the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old Jewish rites, the censers of the
Church, and the joss-sticks of the East, must "pale their ineffectual
fires." All classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries
both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe
to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national
habitations, peculiarities, or habits.

This is not the language of hyperbole. With a partial exception in favor
of the hop, tobacco is the _sole recognized narcotic_ of civilization.
Opium and hemp, if indulged in, are concealed, by the Western nations:
public opinion, public morality, are at war with them. Not so with
tobacco, which the majority of civilized men use, and the minority
rather deprecate than denounce. We shall avail ourselves of some
statistics and computations, which we find ready-calculated, at various
sources, to support these assertions. The following are the amounts of
tobacco consumed _per head_ in various countries:--

"In Great Britain, 17 ounces per head; in France, 18 1/2
ounces,--three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff;
in Denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in Belgium, 73 1/2
ounces per head;--in New South Wales, where there are no duties, by
official returns, 14 pounds per head." We doubt if these q