Dr. George L. Meylan of Columbia University has compiled some interesting data from his observations of a large number of college students covering the three and one-half or four years of their undergraduate life at age approximately of seventeen to twenty at entrance and twenty-one to twenty-four at graduation. The following instructive table prepared by him shows the age when smokers acquired the habit: +---------------------------------------------+ | Age | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | +--------+---+---+---+----+----+----+----+----+ | Number | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 11 | +---------------------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------------+ | Age | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | +----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | Number | 11 | 18 | 30 | 23 | 16 | 0 | 1 | +---------------------------------------------+ It will be observed that the largest number of boys contracted the habit at age seventeen, with ages sixteen and eighteen next in point of numbers. Few boys of the one hundred and fifteen observed in the above table began the habit before the fourteenth year, the age near which adolescence begins. Dr. Meylan reached the following conclusions based on many years of medical examination of boys and young men and his experience in teaching hygiene: “1. All scientists are agreed that the use of tobacco by adolescents is injurious; parents, teachers, and physicians should strive earnestly to warn youths against its use. “2. There is no scientific evidence that the moderate use of tobacco by healthy mature men produces any beneficial or injurious physical effects that can be measured. “3. There is an abundance of evidence that tobacco produces injurious effects on (a) certain individuals suffering from various nervous affections; (b) persons with an idiosyncrasy against tobacco; (c) all persons who use it excessively. “4. It has been shown conclusively in this study and also by Mr. Clarke that the use of tobacco by college students is closely associated with idleness, lack of ambition, lack of application and low scholarship.” Dr. Jay W. Seaver of Yale University has expressed the following opinion as the result of his examination of thousands of university students: