An analogous circumstance occurred in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, as related by Xenophon. Near Trebizond were a number of beehives, and as many of the soldiers as ate of the honeycombs became senseless, and were seized with vomiting and diarrhœa, and not one of them could stand erect. Those who had swallowed but little looked very like drunken men, those who ate much were like madmen, and some lay as if dying; and thus they lay in such numbers, as on a field of battle after a defeat. And the consternation was great; yet no one was found to have died; all recovered their senses about the same hour on the following day; and on the third or fourth day thereafter, they rose up as if they had suffered from the drinking of poison. This poisonous property of the honey is said to be derived by the bees from the flowers of a species of rhododendron (_Azalea pontica_), all of which possess narcotic properties. Supposing that blind old Homer—if ever there was an old Homer, and if blind, no matter—knew the secret of Egyptian Thebes, and the power of the narcotic hemp, and yet never smoked a hubble-bubble, it is of little consequence, except to the Society of Antiquaries, and certainly makes no difference to Homer now. Although Diagoras condemned Hippocrates for giving too much opium to his patients, we are not informed whether it was administered in the shape of “Tinctura opii,” or “Confectio opii,” or “Extractum opii,” or “Godfrey’s cordial,” or “Paregoric elixir.” The discovery would not lengthen our own lives, and therefore we do not repine. We think that we have some consolation left, in that we are wiser than Homer or Hippocrates in respect of that particular vanity, called “shag tobacco,” which, we venture to suggest, neither of those venerable sages ever indulged in during the period of their natural lives. And although Herodotus found the Scythians using, in a strange manner, the tops of the hemp plant, he never got so far as Kamtschatka, and therefore never saw a man getting drunk upon a toadstool. If he had ever seen it, he had never slept till he had told it to that posterity which he has left us to enlighten. CHAPTER III. THE “WOND’ROUS WEED. “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart?”——MACBETH. Amongst Mahometans, the following legend is said to be accepted as an account of the miraculous introduction of the “wond’rous weed” to the world. “Mahomet, passing the desert in winter, found a poor viper frozen on the ground; touched with compassion, he placed it in his sleeve, where the warmth and glow of the blessed body restored it to life. No sooner did the ungrateful reptile find its health restored, than it poked forth its head, and said— “‘Oh, Prophet, I am going to bite you.’