as I
remember, says, fifty-two cyphers with one figure would give the number
of those which would fill the space between us and the stars,) a plant
which has extended its empire over the whole world, and has a larger
dominion than any of all the vegetable kingdom."[53] Our readers may
very easily amuse themselves by making calculations on the immense
consumption and value of this plant. The following account from a French
medical writer,[54] will be sufficient. On a rough calculation, the
tobacco sold yearly in France amounts to 40,000,000 pounds weight, which
at three francs per pound, the ordinary price, will make the enormous
annual sum of 120,000,000 francs. One-fourth of the French population
use tobacco, so that of 8,000,000 of human beings, each individual
consumes annually, in the various forms of snuffing, chewing, and
smoking, about six pounds. This quantity may seem too great for some
persons, but it should be remembered that there are many who use a dozen
or twenty pounds in the course of the year.

If we contemplate man in connexion with tobacco as a necessary, the
juxtaposition cannot fail to strike us as exceedingly ludicrous. From
the earliest ages of philosophy, it has been a favourite employment of
the wise to propose such definitions of man as should fully distinguish
him from the rest of animated nature, and yet no definition of ancient
times will, we are satisfied, appear so excellently discriminative as
one which grows out of our present subject, and which denominates him
the only tobacco loving animal, for (to pass over the tobacco-worm) the
only creature known beside man, whose nature does not abhor tobacco, is,
as Dr. Rush informs us, the solitary rock goat of Africa, one of the
wildest and most filthy of animals. "Were it possible," says he, "for a
being who had resided on our globe, to visit the inhabitants of a planet
where reason governed, and to tell them that a vile weed was in general
use among the inhabitants of the globe it had left, which afforded no
nourishment; that this weed was cultivated with immense care, that it
was an important article of commerce, that the want of it produced real
misery, that its taste was extremely nauseous, that it was unfriendly to
health and morals, and that its use was attended with a considerable
loss of time and property, the account would be thought incredible."[55]
It is idle to speak of tobacco, as being "extremely nauseous," that it
is the "meanes