Two of the specimens which we have given of the former kind are taken from books printed in 1539; the other two are of nearly the same date: the latter specimens are very nearly a century later.

The fool's cap was a later device, and does not seem to have been nearly of such long continuance as the former. It has given place to the figure of Britannia, or that of a lion rampant, supporting the cap of liberty on a pole: the name, however, has continued, and we still denominate paper of a particular size by the title of foolscap paper. The subjoined figures have the cap and bells which we so often read of in old plays and histories as the particular dress of the fool, who formerly formed part of every great man's establish

ment.

Post paper seems to have derived its name from the post-horn which at one time was its distinguishing mark. This is of later date, and does not seem to have been used before the establishment of the General Post-office, when it became the custom to blow a horn.

THE Llama is a native of the lofty and mountainous regions of Peru, Chili, and other districts of South America. It is about four feet and a half in height, and in length, from the neck to the tail, nearly six feet. It bears a strong resemblance to the camel, and performs many of the services allotted to that animal, in the countries where it is found. The Llama is of greater importance than even the camel, on account of the length and fineness of its wool.

In the Spanish settlements of South America before the introduction of mules, the Llama was employed in the ploughing of land, and in many parts of those countries it is still used for the conveyance of goods. Like the camel, it lies down to be loaded, but it is self-willed; when tired with labour, no severity will make it proceed, but kindness and caresses will induce it to rise. There is, however, one peculiarity in the Llama, namely, that it will not travel by night.

The

Llamas are generally employed in carrying the rich ores from the mines of Potosi. In these journies, without repose, and they then rest of their own accord they will sometimes travel four or five days together twenty or thirty hours. In travelling during the daytime, they browse wherever they find herbage, and generally spend the night in chewing the cud. weight, however, which a Lama can carry is not greater than what is carried by an European ass. Its gait is neither a trot nor a gallop, but so exceedingly gentle, that the women prefer the Llama to every other animal for riding. They are pastured in the open fields, and never make any attempt to escape. The wool of the Llama is as soft as silk, and as fine as the wool of our sheep. The animal is generally shorn about the end of June.

The Llama chews the cud, like oxen, sheep, deer, &c. but it differs from other animals of the same kind in the number of its teeth. The nostrils of the Llama consist of a mere slit in the skin, which is opened and shut at pleasure; the lips are thick, the upper one

divided, and the lower hanging down a little; they | rica, but naturalised to our climate. It is a tall and are capable of being opened to a great extent, and not inelegant plant, rising to the height of six feet, possess a considerable degree of separate motion. The ears are about four inches long, are sharp and pointed, and move with great quickness. It is of a greyish mouse colour. Its neck is long and covered with wool, and as its head is always held upright, the animal has an air of nobleness and lightness which nature has refused to the camel. The feet are divided into two toes; the horn of each toe is about an inch and a half long, black and smooth, rounded on the outside, but flat underneath.

Although the Llama is not to be compared to the camel in point of size, strength, or perseverance, yet the Americans find a substitute in it, for which they have good cause to be grateful. It is one of those animals on which the change of climate appears to have no visible effect, prospering and breeding equally in a hot as in a cold climate: for being naturally provided with a warm covering, it does not require to be housed; and being satisfied with vegetables and grass, it requires for its subsistence neither corn nor hay. It exceeds the camel in temperance, particularly in drink, it having been known to live a very long time without water; in fact, of all animals, it appears to require water the least, being supplied by nature with spittle in so large a quantity, that it spits it out at every occasion, and particularly when it is offended; this spittle seems to be the only means which this harmless creature possesses of showing its resentment. When it is overloaded, or fatigued, or impelled by all the torturing arts of its keeper, it falls on its belly, and pours out against him a quantity of this fluid, of which the Indians in general are very much afraid, as they assert that it is of a poisonous nature, either burning the skin, or causing dangerous eruptions.

When the Llamas are amongst their native mountains, they associate in immense herds on the highest and steepest parts. Here they frequently climb rocks, along which no man has the boldness to follow them, and while the remainder are quietly feeding, one of them is always stationed as a sentinel, on the point of a rock. When this animal observes any one approaching, he gives a kind of neigh, and the herd, taking the alarm, run off with amazing speed. They gallop to a considerable distance, then stop, turn round, and gaze at their pursuers till they come near, and immediately set off again. They outrun all the dogs, so that the natives have no other mode of killing them than with guns.

TOBACCO.

[Abridged from THOMSON'S Life of Ralegh.] TOBACCO is the dried leaf of a plant called, by botanists, Nicotiana tabacum; but it is not generally known that the tobacco, brought to this country in the form of dried leaves, cigars, and snuff, is the production of not one only, but of several species of the plant. Most of them are yearly plants, natives of South America; but two, at least, continue all the year round, namely the shrub Nicotiana fruticosa, a native of the Cape of Good Hope and of China; and Nicotiana urens, a native of South America. Many of the species are cultivated in Europe; but, it is remarkable that Humboldt, the celebrated traveller, found only two of them growing wild in the Oroonoko. He found two new species on the mountains of the Andes, at the height of nearly twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea.

The plant which was first known, and which still furnishes the greatest supply of tobacco, is the Nicotiana tabacum, a yearly plant, a native of South Ame

Tobacco.

with a strong round stem. The leaves are in the shape of a spear, and clasp the stem; they are of a full green on the upper surface, and pale on the under. In a healthy plant, the lower leaves are about twenty inches long, and from three to five broad, decreasing in size as they ascend. The flowers blow in July and August; they are of a pale pink or rose colour, and the calyx, or flower-cup, is bell-shaped. The seeds are ripe in September and October; and, if not collected, are shed by the capsule, or seed-vessel, opening at the top.

The cultivation of tobacco varies in different places : the following is the manner of preparing the plant in the United States of America.

The seed is sown in February and March, when the ground is soft and rendered light by repeated workings; in April, after the first spring rains, the young plants are drawn, and placed in beds, at the distance of three feet from one another. The plantations must be kept well weeded; and in another month, the top of each plant is pruned off, the shoots or suckers at the sides are taken away, and the weeds carefully kept down. At this period the plants are attacked by several insects, from which they are cleared by turkeys, flocks of which are driven into the grounds for this purpose. When the plant has reached its full height,

the leaves begin to have a brownish colour, and a clamminess which shows that they are full-grown. They are now cut close to the ground, and laid in heaps, exposed to the sun, for one day; then carried to the sheds, where each plant is hung up separately, and remains until the leaves are perfectly dry; after which they are stripped from the stalks, and tied in small bundles, a twisted leaf serving to tie them together. These bundles are now laid in heaps, and sometimes covered with blankets or straw, to favour a fermentation which takes place in them; but, to prevent too great heat, they are occasionally opened, and spread out in the air.

Tobacco, as it arrives in this country, has undergone a second fermentation, or sea-sweat, as it is termed; acquiring a dark brown hue, and a soft texture. Its smell is strong, and to many not very agreeable: it tastes bitter and very sharp, and, when burned, throws out sparks, continuing to burn after it has been lighted, resembling the burning of paper that has been soaked in nitre. When distilled, it yields a green essential oil, which is a strong poison.

Sir Walter Ralegh found tobacco cultivated in Trinidad on his first visit to it in 1593; but it was not introduced into Virginia until 1616, when its growth there was commenced under the government of Sir Thomas Dale. It is now raised also in the Brazils, Demerara, Cuba, St. Domingo, the Cape of Good Hope, and in India. Sir Walter Ralegh intro- | duced its culture into Ireland, on his estate at Youghal, in the county of Cork; and it is still produced to a small extent in Carlow, Waterford, and Kilkenny, although it has ceased to be raised in England and Scotland since 1782. Before that period, it was grown extensively in the North Riding of Yorkshire; and in the neighbourhood of Kelso, in Scotland, not less than one thousand acres were covered with it.

The history of tobacco as a luxury is very curious. When Columbus discovered America, he found that, in the religious ceremonies of the Indians, a plant was thrown into the fire, the smoke of which produced the same effects upon the officiating Piache,* as in the heathen superstitions of old, the strong vapours of Delphos did upon the Pythian priestess: answers were given, and pretended oracles delivered, under the influence of a peculiar intoxication. This plant was tobacco; which was probably used, also, as a luxury by the natives, for it was smoked over the whole of America at the period of the Spanish conquest. Its introduction into the old world soon followed; and although opposed by every power both civil and religious, yet its use has become so general, that it is not only regarded as an enjoyment by many, in every rank of life, in civilised Europe, but has been introduced wherever Europeans have found their way;-even into the islands of the Pacific Ocean, by their adventurous discoverers. In the Sandwich islands, says Kotzebue, tobacco is now so generally used, that young children learn to smoke before they walk, and grown-up people carry the practice to such an extent, that they have fallen down senseless, and often die in consequence.

There is reason for believing, that the first time the Spaniards saw tobacco smoked, as a luxury, was at a friendly interview between Grijalva, a Spaniard, and the cacique or chief of Tabasco, in 1518. It was from the place of this interview, which is called either Ta

* The Piaches are priests, physicians, and conjurors. Among

the South American Indians, when the priests are consulted by the caciques, they throw tobacco upon the fire, receive the smoke in their mouths, and being thus intoxicated, fall down; and on recovering, deliver the answers which they pretend to have received from the world of spirits.

basco, or Tabaco,t that the plant received its name. In the following year, 1519, the Spanish General, Cortez, sent a present to his king, Charles, as a specimen of the wealth and productions of the territory he had conquered for him: and it was as a part of this present that tobacco first found its way into Europe; when, through the Venetian and Genoese traders to the Levant, it was introduced into Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, and the whole of Asia. It was not, however, until many years afterwards that it attracted considerable notice.

In 1561 some seeds of tobacco were given by a Dutch planter to Jean Nicot, Lord of Villemain, a French nobleman, who was then the ambassador from Francis II. to the court of Portugal. Nicot sent them to his queen, Catherine de Medicis, who afterwards patronised tobacco as a medicine; and thence it obtained the name of Herbe à la Reine, (Queen's Herb) until her death. The generic name, Nicotiana, was given to it by Linnæus, the great Swedish naturalist.

About this period, the monarchs of the world combined, as it were, to avert the evils which they dreaded would result from the introduction of Tobacco into their respective dominions. In England, Queen Elizabeth published an edict against its use, giving as a reason, that her subjects, by indulging in the same luxuries as barbarians, were likely to degenerate into barbarism. In the following reign, King James wrote his celebrated book called Counterblaste to Tobacco, in which he says that the custom of smoking "is loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs; and, in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." At the same time, this monarch imposed a duty, intended to be a prohibitory one, of six shillings and eight pence per pound on the importation of tobacco; and enacted, that no planter in Virginia should raise more than one hundred pounds of it in one year. Charles I. continued this impost, and made tobacco a royal monopoly, as it is at the present time in the Netherlands and in France. An amusing fact, connected with the opposition to its general use, is related of Fagon, a physician to Louis XIV.; in the midst of a violent speech on the pernicious effects of tobacco, the orator made a pause; and taking his snuff-box from his pocket, refreshed himself with a pinch, to enable him to renew the argument

In 1590, Shah Abbas forbade the use of tobacco in Persia, by a penal law: but so firmly had the luxury rooted itself among his subjects, that many inhabitants of cities fled to the mountains, where they hid themselves, rather than forego the pleasure of smoking. In 1624, the Pope anathematised all snuff-takers, who indulged in the habit of snuff-taking in any church : and so lately as 1690, the then Pope excommunicated all who indulged in that vice in the church of St. Peter at Rome. In 1625, the Grand Sultan, Amurath IV., prohibited smoking, as an unnatural and irreligious custom, under pain of death: few, indeed, suffered the penalty, yet, in Constantinople, where the custom is now universal, smoking was thought to be so ridiculous and hurtful, that any Turk, who was caught in the act, was conducted in ridicule through the streets, with a pipe passed through his nose. Russia, where the peasantry now smoke all day long, the Grand Duke of Moscow prohibited the entrance of tobacco into his dominions, under the penalty of personal chastisement for the first offence, and death for the second; and the Muscovite who was found snuffing was condemned to have his nostrils split. So + Tabasco is an island in the Gulf of Mexico, at the bottom of the Bay of Campeachy.

In

great, indeed, was the hostility of the government | against tobacco, in every form, that a particular court of law, for punishing smokers, was instituted in 1634, and not abolished until the middle of the eighteenth century. Even in Switzerland war was waged against the American herb: to smoke, in Berne, ranked as a crime next to adultery; and in 1653, all smokers were cited before the Council at Appenzel, and severely punished. But, like many persecuted customs, good or bad, tobacco triumphed over all opposition; it is now cultivated in both hemispheres of the globe; and the importation of tobacco and snuff into Great Britain alone, during a recent year, amounted to 16,880 hogsheads.

It has been stated that tobacco was discovered by the Spaniards in Yucatan, in 1518; but Humboldt asserts that it was cultivated, from time immemorial, by the natives of Oroonoko, where it is called Petun, Pote-ma, and Piciel. It was, soon after its discovery, transported to the West Indies, particularly to Cuba, the tobacco of which is still the most highly prized;

and to North America, where it has been most extensively cultivated. One curious circumstance connected with its cultivation in Virginia, is worth noticing. The planters, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, being all bachelors, regarded themselves merely as temporary sojourners in the colony; the London Company, which was established in 1606, for the colonization of Virginia, with a view to their steadiness, sent out a number of respectable young women to supply the settlers with wives. These ladies were actually sold for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco each, being the amount of the expenses of the voyage.