these provinces were the constellations: there was supremely decided all that should happen, whether favourable or unfavourable, to the great terrestrial empire, the empire of China.’ Their historians carry back the traditions of their country to a period so remote (millions of years) that Europe can only be conceived of as primeval forest, and its inhabitants as barely emerging from their protoplasmic swamps. It is, moreover, a country of fantastic oddities, of topsy-turvy notions of the proprieties of every-day life; where you are constantly meeting with gentlemen in petticoats and ladies in trousers, the ladies smoking and the gentlemen fanning themselves: where ladies of quality may be seen toddling like animated walking-sticks, while stout fellows sit indoors trimming dainty head-dresses for them. Go outside the city and you find greybeards playing shuttlecock with their feet or flying curious kites, and others chirruping and chuckling to their pet birds which they have brought out to take the air, while groups of youths gravely look on regarding these juvenile pastimes of their elders with becoming approval. Early in the course of European adventure in the far East, travellers who, under various disguises had succeeded in penetrating into the interior of China, found in some provinces the cultivation of tobacco ranking among the foremost of their agricultural productions. Bell, in his _Travels in Asia_ (Pinkerton’s Edition, 1811), speaking of China, says: ‘I also saw great plantations of tobacco which they call “Tharr,” and which yield considerable profits. It is universally used in smoking in China by persons of all ranks and both sexes; and besides, great quantities are sent to the Mongols, who prefer the Chinese method of preparing it before any other. They make it into gross powder like sawdust, which they keep in a small bag, and fill their little brass pipes out of it without touching it with their fingers. The smoke is very mild, and has a different smell from ours. It is reported that the Chinese have had the use of it for many ages.’ Tobacco and the habit of smoking it are mentioned in the annals of the Yuen dynasty, about two centuries before Columbus had discovered America. Those who cry down every other than an American origin for the weed, assert that the Chinese product is not tobacco, but some other herb used in the same way. Botanists, however, have shown this opinion to be erroneous. The great plain of Ching-too Foo is noted as the region where the culture and manufacture of tobacco are conducted on a more extensive scale than in any other part of the empire. In this plain the district of Sze-Chuen stands out prominently as the great centre and mart of the industry; from its plantations are exported large quantities of tobacco to other parts of China, to Yun-nan, Hoo-nan, Han-Kow, and also to Se-fan in Thibet. To Han-Kow alone are annually exported about fifty thousand _piculs_,—say, about three thousand tons.