It would be a most interesting pursuit to trace to its commencement the practice of opium-smoking in China and India. Whence its origin, and how long has the practice existed? We do know how and when tobacco was introduced into England and the countries of Europe. But Turkey? When the Turks over-ran and possessed themselves of Syria, Egypt, North Africa and, with the Arabs, penetrated into Spain and Hungary, and at last, in 1453, sat down in Constantinople, was the pipe unknown amongst them? Are they indebted to our enterprise for the introduction of the soothing weed which we still take in the unsophisticated state of the rolled leaf, whilst they have developed the sublime medium of the hookah and the hubble-bubble?

Amongst the utensils unearthed at Mycenæ and Naucratis, is there no smoking-tube? Is nothing of the kind in the sarcophagi of the Pharaohs? It is impossible to believe that there never was smoking till the other day, when our Elizabethan sea-captains brought the curious plants from the New World.

And again, in America how long had the practice reigned? Are there no traces of pipes among the sculptured ruins of the Astecs? Did neither Cortez nor Pizzaro bring any gold or jewelled examples into Spain? There must be some record of their antiquity in a direction east or west. One cannot sit content with the belief that the manhood of the whole world has been conquered by a habit invented and propagated by the Red Indian of the American forests!