Johnny Englishman, with his usual genius for discovery and invention, has been discovered filling his pipe on board ship with oakum, when the stores of tobacco have been exhausted, but not being satisfied from his own experiments of the superiority of hemp, in that form, to his brother Jonathan’s tobacco, he therefore adheres to the latter. He considers hemp an excellent thing when twisted into a good hawser, but does not like it as “twist” in the masticatory acceptation of the term; nor does he at all admire the twist of Ben Battle, when “Round his melancholy neck A rope he did entwine, And for his second time in life, Enlisted in the line. “One end he tied around a beam, And then removed his pegs; And as his legs were off, of course He soon was off his legs. “And there he hung till he was dead As any nail in town; For though distress had cut him up, It could not cut him down.” Hemp is one of those plants which adapts itself well to any climate: there is scarce a country in Europe where it cannot, or might not, be cultivated. From Poland and Russia in the North, to Italy in the South, the fibre is supplied to our markets. In North America it is grown for its fibre, and in South America for its narcotic properties. Throughout Africa, it may be found chiefly as an article for the pipe. In most of Asia it is known, and it has been cultivated in Australia. Thus, in its distribution, it may now be considered as almost universal. Twenty-five centuries ago, Herodotus wrote of its cultivation by the Scythians:——“They have a sort of hemp growing in this country very like flax, except in thickness and height; in this respect the hemp is far superior—it grows both spontaneously and from cultivation, and from it the Thracians make garments very like linen, nor would any one who is not well skilled in such matters distinguish whether they are made of flax or hemp; but a person who has never seen this hemp, would think the garment was made of flax.” Then follows a description of the use of the hemp as a narcotic: “The Scythians, transported with the vapour, shout aloud.” Antiquity is in favour of this narcotic, and its use for that purpose before any other, except perhaps the poppy, was known, or at least of those now in use. The _nepenthes_ of Homer has been supposed to have been this plant, or one of its products. The use of hemp had become so general amongst the Romans at the time of Pliny, that they commonly made ropes and cordage of it. The practice of chewing the leaves to produce intoxication existed in India in very early ages, whence it was carried to Persia, and before the middle of the thirteenth century, this custom was adopted in Egypt, but chiefly by persons of the lower orders.