in the smoke. Evaporating one drop of this subtle essence you are at once seized with a feeling of suffocation, and experience difficulty in breathing. Distilled alone in a retort yet another element is called up of an oily nature, which resembles in its chief characteristics an oil obtained by a similar process from the leaves of the foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_). This also is acrid and poisonous; one drop applied to the tongue of a cat brought on convulsions, and, in two minutes, death. All these evil things the chemist tells us dwell in the heart of the Indian herb, and, mingling with other unseen elements, lure men on to their fate. In the mystical glare of his laboratory there looms into shape before our mental vision the spectral form of the King of Denmark, in _Hamlet_, telling of the dark deeds done With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of my ears did pour The leprous distilment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body.[3] And memory recalls the case of the Comte de Bocarmé who was executed at Mons, in 1851, for poisoning his brother-in-law with nicotine, in order to obtain reversion of his property. The simple though crafty Hottentot, too, finds in the juice of tobacco a potent agent wherewith he can rid himself of the snake that, unbidden, glides into his kraal. Under the influence of one drop the reptile dies as instantly as if struck by an electric spark.