“Tobacco, like those who smoke it, is credited with many sins of which it is guiltless. The ‘loss of health’ so often laid at its door is probably due in many instances not to tobacco itself, but to some villainous compound bearing its name. A story told by the principal of the laboratory of the Inland Revenue Department in his report for the past year shows how easily this may happen. The supervisor at Birmingham, observing that an article was being sold at a very cheap rate in packets, under the name of ‘smoking mixture,’ sent a sample to the Inland Revenue laboratory for examination, and it being found to contain a large proportion of vegetable matter resembling the broken-up heads of camomile flowers, further inquiry led to the discovery of the manufactory. The process of manufacture consisted in exhausting the bitter principle of camomile flower-heads with water, and then dyeing and sweetening them with a solution of logwood and liquorice, which brought them, when dried, somewhat to the colour of tobacco. The heads, when broken up, were then mixed with from 20 to 30 per cent. of cut tobacco, according to the price at which the mixture was to be sold. The mixture was supplied to retailers in packets labelled ‘The New Smoking Mixture, Analysed and Approved,’ and as agencies had already been established in several towns, an extensive trade would no doubt soon have arisen had the manufactory not been suppressed at an early stage of its existence.” The United States Consul at Smyrna puts the following statement in his report of January 15, 1883. Since the establishment of the tobacco monopoly in Turkey, snuff may be said to be one of the several articles that undergo the most unscrupulous adulteration. Owing to the high amount of duties imposed on tobacco by the Turkish Government, and the large profits licensed manufacturers expect to make on the same, the poorer classes cannot afford to use the products of doubtful purity coming from the factories, and so are altogether at the mercy of the clandestine manufacturer and retailer, who, in order to make the most he can of his vile industry, adulterates his snuff to such an extent that it can be safely said that his products contain on an average from 60 to 70 per cent. of inferior Persian tobacco (tumbeki), fragments of country tobacco leaf, and tobacco of cigarettes picked up in the streets by beggars, the 30 to 40 per cent. consisting of walnut sawdust, terra umbra, fine sifted sand, and scum of lead (lead oxide), covered with inferior black writing-ink. The snuff is manufactured in Smyrna, as follows: