If, however, cigars are not open to the charge of being adulterated, they are the subject of innumerable frauds, inasmuch as those of English manufacture are passed off as foreign ones. Thus, the so-called Bengal cheroots are _all_ home-made imitations of Chinsurah cheroots. In order to pass them off as the genuine article they are sold in boxes, branded and labelled in exact imitation of those sent from India. It may be asked why such cigars, if made out of the tobacco-leaf, are not as good as those of Eastern or Spanish manufacture. The real reason is, that the tobacco loses much of its fine flavour and aroma by packing and keeping; otherwise the English cigar would be equal to any other. The old impression that the Manilla cheroot is impregnated with opium would not appear to be correct, from the investigations of Dr. Hassall, who has failed to discover that narcotic in any of the specimens which he tested for it. We have to mention one preparation of tobacco of which we cannot speak quite so favourably as of the others. Snuff is, we are sorry to say, vilely adulterated, and some kinds poisonously. The law allows the use of salt and water and lime-water in its manufacture--a privilege which the snuff-makers take advantage of to increase its weight, all moist snuffs averaging full twenty-five per cent. of water. If these were the only adulterations to the titillating powder, no harm would be done; but we have positive evidence afforded us in the report of the "Lancet" Commission, that, in addition to ferruginous earths, such as red and yellow ochre, no less than three poisonous preparations are also introduced into it--chromate of lead, red-lead, and bichromate of potash! When a man taps his snuff-box and takes out a pinch, he little dreams that he is introducing an enemy into his system, which in the long-run might master his nerves and produce paralysis; nevertheless it is an undoubted fact. Many persons have been deprived of the use of their limbs through a persistence in taking snuff adulterated with lead in less proportions than that found in the samples examined by Dr. Hassall. Bi-chromate of potash is a still more deadly poison. M. Duchâtel of Paris found that dogs were destroyed by doses of from one twenty-fifth of a grain to one five-hundredth of a grain. We have heard of inveterate snuffers keeping this comfort open in their waistcoat pockets, and helping themselves by fingers'-full at a time; if their snuff contained anything like the proportion of deleterious ingredients now to be found in the same article, "dropped hands" and colic would soon have cured them of this dirty and disagreeable habit.