It has been computed that eight hundred millions of the human race are consumers of tobacco, and that the average annual consumption is 70 ounces per head. The total consumption would, therefore, approximate to two millions of tons. The average annual consumption of every male over eighteen years of age, in each of the following countries of Europe, as collected from returns, is, in Austria, 108 ounces; Zollverein, 156 ounces; Steurverein, including Hanover and Oldenburg, 200 ounces; France, 88 ounces; Russia, 40 ounces; Portugal, 56 ounces; Spain, 76 ounces; Sardinia, 44 ounces; Tuscany, 40 ounces; the Papal States, 32 ounces; England, 66 ounces; Holland, 132 ounces; Belgium, 144 ounces; Denmark, 128 ounces; Sweden, 70 ounces; and Norway, 99 ounces. In the United States of America, the consumption is 122 ounces; and in New South Wales, where there are no restrictive duties, it is declared to exceed 400 ounces. “_Jamie_, thou shouldst been living at this hour, Europe hath need of thee.” To what a height of royal indignation the “Misocapnos” would have risen, had its author postponed its publication 250 years, and reappeared, a “new avater,” to see it through the press in these latter days. He had then required no Spanish matches to set him on fire; and the “horrible Stygian smoake” would have required the addition of all Catesby’s gunpowder to have made the simile worthy of its royal master, unless, peradventure, the weight of five millions of golden sovereigns from the Inland Revenue Office had pressed heavily upon his conscience, and he had purchased himself a new pair of silk stockings, and rested in peace; then he could have returned the old pair he borrowed in his Scotch capital, in which to meet his English Court at London. Since the days when the green leaf of tobacco was used as a sovereign application for wounds and bruises and the bites of poisonous serpents, there has been no more singular use discovered for any part of this plant than that of certain African tribes, who, Denham says, “colour their teeth and lips with the flowers of the goorjee tree and the tobacco plant. The former, he saw only once or twice; the latter, was carried every day to market at Bornou, beautifully arranged in large baskets. The flowers of both these plants rubbed on the lips and teeth give them a blood-red appearance, which is there thought a great beauty.” That the poison of tobacco should have been turned to account is not surprising; and we are more prepared to hear of the bushmen of South Africa poisoning the heads of their arrows, not with nicotine, but with a poison taken from the head of the yellow serpent. These serpents they kill with the oil of tobacco, one drop or two producing spasms and death. Count Bocarmé effectually settled the question of the poisonous property of nicotine, some years since at Mons. It remained for future experimentalists to discover that as well as a _bane_, tobacco was an _antidote_.