ree or four qualities, as Yellow, Bright, Dull, etc."
Next it is "bulked," or put into bundles, and these again dried, and
afterwards "conditioned," and packed in hogsheads weighing from six
hundred to a thousand pounds each.

It would be too long to detail the processes of cigar- and snuff-making,
the latter of which is quite complicated.

We were happy to learn from the fearful work of Hassall on "Food and
its Adulterations," that tobacco was one of the articles least tampered
with; and particularly that there was no opium in cheroots, but nothing
more harmful than hay and paper. He ascribes this immunity mainly to
the vigilance of the excisemen. But we have recently seen a work on
the adulteration of tobacco, whose microscopic plates brought back our
former misgivings. Molasses is a very common agent used to give color
and render it toothsome. Various vegetable leaves, as the rhubarb,
beech, walnut, and mullein, as well as the less delectable bran, yellow
ochre, and hellebore, in snuff, are also sometimes used to defraud.
Saltpetre is often sprinkled on, in making cigars, to improve their
burning.

The Indians mixed tobacco in their pipes with fragrant herbs. Cascarilla
bark is a favorite with some smokers; it is a simple aromatic and
tonic, but, when smoked, is said sometimes to occasion vertigo and
intoxication.

We have before observed that tobacco is a very exhausting crop to the
soil. The worn-out tobacco-plantations of the South are sufficient
practical proof of this, while it is also readily explained by
chemistry. The leaves of tobacco are among the richest in incombustible
ash, yielding, when burned, from 19 to 28 _per cent_. of inorganic
substance. This forms the abundant ashes of tobacco-pipes and of cigars.
All this has been derived from the soil where it was raised, and it is
of a nature very necessary to vegetation, and not very abundant in the
most fertile lands. "Every ton of dried tobacco-leaves carries off from
four to five hundred-weight of this mineral matter,--as much as is
contained in fourteen tons of the grain of wheat." It follows
that scientific agriculture can alone restore this waste to the
tobacco-plantation.

There is one other aspect of this great subject, which is almost
peculiar to New England, the home of reform. Certain Puritanical
pessimists have argued that the use of tobacco is immoral. There are
few, except our own sober people, who would admit this question at
all. We wo