"All kinds of snuff are made from tobacco leaves, or tobacco stalks, either separate or mixed. This in the first instance goes through a kind of fermentation, and, like the basis of soup at the modern hotels, forms, as it were, the stock from which all the varieties in flavor and appearance are produced by special treatment and flavoring. Of course the strength and pungency of the snuff will depend a good deal upon the richness of the tobacco originally put aside for it. About one thousand pounds of tobacco would form an ordinary batch of snuff. The duty on this would amount to about L150, and this has to be paid before the tobacco is removed from the bonded warehouse. Having got his heap of material ready, the snuff-maker moistens it, then places it in a warm room and covers it over with warm cloths--coddles it, as it were, to make it comfortable, so that the cold air cannot get to it--and the heap is then left for three or four weeks, as the case may be, to ferment. "In France, where, under the Imperial _regime_, snuff-making was a Government monopoly, the tobacco was allowed to ferment for twelve or eighteen months; and in the principal factory (that at Strasburg) might have been seen scores of huge bins, as large as porter vats, all piled up with tobacco in various stages of fermentation. The tobacco, after being fermented, if intended for that light, powdery, brown-looking snuff called S. P., is dried a little; or if for Prince's Mixture, Macobau, or any other kind of Rappee, is at once thrown into what is called the mull. The mull is a kind of large iron mortar weighing about half a ton and lined with wood; and there is a heavy pestle which travels round it, forming, as it were, a large pestle and mortar. These mulls are placed in rows and shut up in separate cupboards, to keep in the dust. The snuff-maker wanders from one to the other, and feeds them as they require.