The _Boston Journal_ has recently published the results of investigations concerning the number of boys in the public schools of that city who use tobacco. The master of the Latin School informs the reporter that one half of the boys from fourteen to eighteen years of age had used the weed, though probably few had fully contracted the habit. Many of them smoke on the sly, though some have the permission of their parents to use it. In the English High School, it is thought that few of the boys smoke, and none are allowed to chew. The master's view, however, is that a teacher's precepts are of little use in preventing the habit unless they are reinforced by his example. The principal of the Dudley School, Boston Highlands, is of the opinion that something like forty per cent. of his boys use it more or less. The master of the Emerson School, East Boston, having studied the subject, concludes that out of four hundred boys there are forty habitual smokers, and that one third of the whole number occasionally smoke. He thinks that it is rarely the case that boys begin smoking _before they are eight years of age_. In the Grammar School at Charlestown it is estimated that forty of the three hundred boys use tobacco habitually, and that many more have occasionally smoked. Master Harrington, of the Eliot School does not think that a larger proportion than one third of all his boys have yet contracted the habit. Not a few young men have consulted me professionally, whose nervous systems have been greatly impaired from the habit of smoking, and who say they formed the habit when not more than eight or ten years of age, and they would gladly give it up, and undo its influence if such a thing were possible. In such cases society should protect itself, at least until the individual has become old enough to realize, in some measure, the results of his action. Of the effects of the use of tobacco upon other portions of the system than the brain it is not within my province, or necessary to my purpose, to refer at this time, though they may be, and doubtless are of a grave character in some cases. To sum up its effects upon the mental and moral character of the young, when it is daily or frequently used, I cannot do better than use the words of a pamphlet published by Monsieur Fiévée in relation to its general effects upon society: