I fear my experience can be of little use to you. I have never smoked except once--when at school; I then got sick, and have never desired to smoke since. I have not paid particular attention to the subject, but I have never seen anything to make me believe that tobacco was of real use to intellectual workers. I have known of people being injured by smoking too much, but I never heard of anyone suffering from not smoking at all. ROBERT S. BALL. February 13, 1882. MR. HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, SAN FRANCISCO. In my opinion, some constitutions are benefited by a moderate use of tobacco and alcohol; others are not. But to touch these things is dangerous. H. H. BANCROFT. May 6, 1882. MR. JOSEPH BAXENDELL, F. R. A. S. I fear that my experience of the results of the use of stimulants will not aid you much in your enquiry. Although I am not a professed teetotaler or anti-smoker, practically I may say I am one: and when I am engaged in literary work, scientific investigations, or long and complicated calculations, I never think of taking any stimulant to aid or refresh me, and I doubt whether it would be of any use to do so. JOSEPH BAXENDELL. February 20, 1882. DR. G. M. BEARD, FELLOW OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE. In reply to your enquiries, I may say--first: I do not find that alcohol is so good a stimulant to thought as coffee, tea, opium, or tobacco. On myself alcohol has rather a benumbing and stupefying effect, whatever may be the dose employed; whereas, tobacco and opium, in moderate doses, tea, and especially coffee, as well as cocoa, have an effect precisely the reverse. Secondly: there are many persons on whom alcohol in large or small doses has a stimulating effect on thought: they can speak and think better under its influence. The late Daniel Webster was accustomed to stimulate himself for his great speeches by the use of alcohol. Thirdly: these stimulants and narcotics, according to the temperament of the person on whom they are used, have effects precisely opposite, either sedative or stimulating; while coffee makes some people sleepy, the majority of persons are made wakeful by it. Some are made very nervous by tobacco in the form of smoking, while on others it acts as a sedative, and induces sleep. General Grant once told me 'that, if disturbed during the night, or worried about anything so that he could not sleep, he could induce sleep by getting up and smoking a short time--a few whiffs, as I understood him, being sufficient. If I were to judge by my own experience alone--which it is not fair to do--I should say that coffee is the best stimulant for mental work; next to that tobacco and quinine; but as I grow older, I observe that alcohol in reasonable doses is beginning to have a stimulating effect. GEORGE M. BEARD. March 13, 1882. PROFESSOR PAUL BERT. My views on tobacco and alcohol, and their action on the health, may be summed up in the following four propositions:--