Those who are desirous of seeing specimens of the narcotics named in the following pages, can visit either the Museum of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the East India House Museum, the Food Department in the gallery of the South Kensington Museum, or the Industrial Museum in the gallery of the central transept of the Crystal Palace, in each of which they will meet with some of the articles named, though in none of them will they discover all. In the former two are illustrations of the opium manufacture, and at Kensington an interesting series of tobaccos, and other articles connected with the indulgence therein, and also with opium-smoking in China, together with some of the tobacco substitutes and sophistications. None of these collections are so complete as they might be. Public museums of this kind have every facility for doing more to instruct the public on the common things of every-day life: why they do not accomplish this, is as much a fault, perhaps, of the public as of themselves. There are hopes, however, to be entertained that one, at least, of these institutions will exhibit, in a complete and collected form, the principal narcotics and their substitutes. Why I should have chosen such a title for my volume, and wherefore invested it with a legend, is matter of little importance. It was a fancy of my own, and if any think fit to quarrel with it, they may do so, without disturbing my peace of mind. The reply of the Ourisk to his companions, as to who set him on fire, was, “Myself.” Parents seldom baptize their children with a name pleasing to all their friends and relatives, yet the child manages to get through the world with it, and—dies at last. M. C. C. _Lambeth._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.—SOMEWHAT FABULOUS. PAGE The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus; Legend of the Seven Sisters of Sleep; Laureates of Sleep; Necessity of Sleep; Pleasures of Sleep; Sanctity of Sleep; The “Last Sleep of Argyle;” Death of Sleeping Duncan; Desdemona and Othello; Drowsiness, fatal alike to Devotion and Instruction 1 CHAPTER II.—THE SISTERS OF OLD. Hemp amongst the Scythians; Intoxicating vapours of the Massagetæ; the _Nepenthes_ of Homer; the Secret of Egyptian Thebes; The Poppy of the Ancients; Secret Poisoning of Aratus of Sicyon; The Acts of Locusta; Death of Britannicus; The Delphic Oracle; Arabian Nights; Another Nepenthes; Antony’s Retreat; Retreat of the Ten Thousand; Something unknown 10 CHAPTER III.—THE “WOND’ROUS WEED.”