“I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet, Heaven forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friends’ request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not.”——King Henry IV., part 2.  
It is the misfortune of kingdoms to be subject to rebellions, and of monarchs to behold the advent of pretenders, as it is the fate of gold to be imitated in baser metals, and bank notes to be forged. A rule is supposed to be strengthened by an exception, and tried gold to shine in greater splendour beside its counterfeit—
 
“Than that which hath no foil to set it off.”
So, tobacco, in the midst of all its success and prosperity, has been envied and imitated by duller pretenders to the virtue it boasts, from among the meaner denizens of the vegetable world. Of course these pretenders have been unsuccessful; for had they been successful, they had no longer been branded with the baser name, but had risen to the rank of benefactors and patriots. Such is the custom of the world.
 
The following are the substances which are105 stated to be used for the adulteration of tobacco, principally in the form of “cut” and “roll.” Dr. Hassell divides them—
 
First, into vegetable substances, as the leaves of the dock, rhubarb, coltsfoot, cabbage, potato, chicory, endive, elm, and oak; malt cummings, that is the roots of germinating malt; peat, which consists chiefly of decayed moss; seaweed, roasted chicory root, wheat, oatmeal, bran, catechu or terra japonica, oakum, and logwood dye.
 
Secondly, into saccharine substances, as cane-sugar, treacle, honey, liquorice, and beetroot dregs.
 
Thirdly, into salts and earths, as nitre, common salt, sal ammoniac, or hydrochlorate of ammonia, nitrate of ammonia, carbonate of ammonia, the alkalies, as potash, soda, and lime; sulphate of magnesia, sulphate of soda or glauber salts, yellow ochre, umber, fuller’s earth, Venetian red, sand, and sulphate of iron.
 
And the experience of the excise, as may be gathered from the evidence of Mr. Phillips before the committee of adulteration, harmonizes with the above list. “With regard to tobacco,” he says, “we have found in cut tobacco, sugar, liquorice, gum catechu, saltpetre, and various nitrates; yellow ochre, Epsom salts, glauber salts, green copperas, red sandstone, wheat, oatmeal, malt cummings, chicory, and the following leaves—coltsfoot, rhubarb, chicory, endive, oak, elm; and in fancy tobacco, I once found lavender, and a wort called mugwort. It is a fragrant herb, suggestive rather of the nutmeg. In roll tobacco we have found rhubarb leaves, endive and dock leaves, sugar, liquorice, and a dye made of logwood and sulphate of iron.”
 
Let consumers of tobacco console themselves, however, in the face of this formidable list, by the assurance of the eminent experimenter on articles106 of food, &c., before named, that “not one of the forty samples of manufactured cut tobacco which he examined was adulterated with any foreign leaf, or with any insoluble or organic extraneous substance of any description other than with sugar, or some other saccharine matter, which was present in several instances.”
 
Leaving adulterations to take care of themselves, we find that an article, of very ancient use, is still occasionally smoked instead of the Virginian weed. The plant referred to is coltsfoot (Tussilago farfar, Linn.), a very common weed on chalky and gravelly soils. Pliny refers to it, and directs that the foliage should be burned, and the smoke arising from it drawn into the mouth through a reed and swallowed. These leaves have long been smoked for chest complaints, and are said to form the chief ingredient in British herb tobacco.
 
The leaves of milfoil or yarrow (Achill?a millefolium), another plant equally common with the last, have been recommended to smokers in lieu of tobacco, and occasionally used for that purpose. Added to beer, they render it heady or more intoxicating.
 
Leaves of rhubarb are occasionally smoked by those who are too poor to furnish themselves with a regular supply of tobacco, and those who have used them state, that, although devoid of strength, they are not a bad substitute when tobacco is not to be obtained. For the same purpose they are collected and used in Thibet, and on the slopes of the Himalayas.
 
The leaves of a plant common in marshes and boggy soils in Europe and North America, called Bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata, Linn.) are used in the north of Europe when hops are scarce, to give a bitter flavour to beer, and have been recommended and adopted as a tobacco substitute.
 
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An agricultural labourer near Blois, pretends that the leaves of the beet make an excellent tobacco.
 
Undescribed plants called Akil and Trouna, are used by the Arabs of Algeria to render their tobacco milder.
 
In some parts of Europe, the leaves of the common garden sage has served the same purpose; whilst in some parts of Switzerland, the leaves of mountain tobacco (Arnica montana, Linn.) are collected for use as tobacco, or dried and powdered to be used as snuff. This is no doubt a virulent plant, and has the reputation of being a powerful acrid narcotic.
 
The tobacco substitutes in North America are more numerous than we should have expected to have found in the native land of the true tobacco. A decoction of the holly-leaves (Ilex vomitoria, Linn.) are drunk by the native Creek Indians, under the name of “black drink,” at the opening of their councils, on account of its peculiar properties. This shrub is also called Cossena by the Indians, and the leaves are used for smoking as a substitute for tobacco. “Often,” says one of the early settlers, “I have smoked a pipe of cossena with their majesties Toma Chaci and Senoaki his queen, at their mud-palace, about three miles from Savanacke.”
 
The Virginian or Stag’s Horn Sumach,18 which is met with almost over the whole of the United States, supplies leaves which are dried and used by some of the native tribes as tobacco.
 
The Indians of the Mississippi and Missouri use the leaves of another Sumach (Rhus copallina) and Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata, Linn.) is supposed to be indebted for its name to the fact that it was108 one of the plants smoked by the Indians instead of the genuine “weed.” Under the name of “tombeki,” the leaf of a species of Lobelia is smoked in parts of Asia. It is smoked in a narghilè, and is exceedingly narcotic, so much so, that it is usually steeped in water to weaken it before being used; and it is always smoked whilst damp.
 
Not many years since, a patent was taken out at Washington for fabricating tobacco from maize-husks, steeped in a solution of cayenne. It was stated to be equal in flavour to true tobacco, and without any of the deleterious properties which have been attributed to that plant.
 
The Miliceti Indians, New Brunswick, scrape the bark from the young twigs of the birch, and when dry, mix it with their tobacco for smoking. They are very partial to the admixture, the odour of which, it is affirmed, is much more agreeable than that of pure tobacco.
 
Mr. M?lhausen smoked willow-leaves among the Rocky Mountains; and the use of these leaves for the same purpose is mentioned in “Hiawatha.”
 
The Bearberry (Arctostaphylus uva ursi) common in many parts of North America, is found in the valley of the Oregon, where the leaves are collected by the Chenook Indians, who mix them with their tobacco. The Crees also use them for the same purpose, and with them it is called Tchakashè-pukh. The Chepewyans, who name it Kleh, and the Eskimos north of Churchill (by whom it is termed Attu............