Any one who will take the trouble to read through the “Curiosities of Food,” will soon become convinced, from the examples which Mr. P. L. Simmonds has collected so assiduously from all parts of the world, that there is no accounting for tastes. What extraordinary things men will admit between their teeth to gratify their appetites, is almost enough to set one’s own teeth on edge. Tobacco is certainly not more nauseous or revolting, than to us would be many of the delicacies dished up for dinner by some of the bipedal race. “Some Europeans,” observes the author, “chew tobacco, the Hindoo takes to betel nut and lime, while the Patagonian finds contentment in a bit of guano, and the Styrians grow fat and ruddy on arsenic. English children delight in sweetmeats and sugar-candy, while those of Africa prefer rock salt. A Frenchman likes frogs and snails, and we eat eels, oysters, and whelks. To the Esquimaux, train oil is your only delicacy. The Russian luxuriates upon his hide and tallow; the Chinese upon rats, puppy dogs, and shark’s fins; the Kaffir upon elephant’s foot and trunk or lion steaks; while the Pacific islander places cold missionary above every other edible. Why then should we be surprised at men’s feeding upon rattle snakes and monkeys, and pronouncing them capital eating?”[14] Nothing is more extraordinary than the habit of dirt-eating and chewing of lime, either by themselves or in combination with other substances. But more of this anon. Tobacco, as a masticatory, might equally cause surprise did it not daily occur at our doors. The quantity used in this form will not bear comparison with that consumed in smoke, but even this is considerable. In America, the custom is carried to a very unpleasant extent, and were it the only form in which the plant could be indulged, there is good ground for presuming that it would fall very far short of the popularity which it has attained. Somebody, with a strong antipathy to pig-tail and fine cut, has entered into certain investigations and calculations in the _Philadelphia Journal_, which has resulted in this wise. If a tobacco chewer chews for fifty years, and uses each day of that period two inches of solid plug, he will consume nearly one mile and a quarter in length of solid tobacco, half an inch thick and two inches broad, costing 2,094 dollars, or about £500. Plug ugly, sure enough! By the same process of reasoning, this statist calculates, that if a man ejects one pint of saliva per day for fifty years (a feat, one would presume, it would require a Yankee to accomplish), the total would swell into nearly 2,300 gallons, quite a respectable lake, and almost enough to float the “Great Eastern” in! Truly, Brother Jonathan, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.