SUPPLIES IN CITY SHOPS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 171, 10 October 1927, Page 16

SUPPLIES IN CITY SHOPS

“ ’X faith, ’tis a pretty piece.” The gallants of the 17th and 18th centuries tapped beautifully enamelled snuff boxes with superlative grace and flicked wrists round which fine laces fell like foam. “ ’I faith., ’tis a pretty piece,” they would say of some new snuff hex, a masterpiece of the workmen of the day. The gallants have gone. So for the most part have the takers of snuff. Pipes and the easily lighted cigarette have ousted the dun-coloured powder with which our forefathers tickled their noses. But Auckland has her devotees of snuff, quite a number of them. Many of the citj' and suburban tobacconists have their permanent customers, who obtain their monthly supply in tiny 2ciz tins. “Not many young people take snuff nowadays,” said a well-known tobacconist this morning. “Yes, both men and women, buy it, though the demand is not great..” In another shop an assistant displayed a number of tins of snuff. “Yes, we have lots of customers,” she remarked. But more interesting still is the fact that Auckland has at least one man who smokes perique without mixing it with any other tobacco. The smell of perique was sufficient for the man who was making the inquiries. This tobacco is particularly dark and pungent. It is grown in AsiaMinor and is prepared by the inhabitants who hang it to the roofs of their houses and smoke it in the same manner as bacon is smoked. The curious fuel used helps to give the perique its strange flavour. Latakia is another strange tobacco which is mixed with other brands to give them a distinct flavour. It is smoked in large quantities in Egypt, where rosewood, jasmine and cherrywood pipes are used to extract the full flavour of this rank tobacco. Sir Richard Burton, who travelled extensively in the East, said that the odour of latakia resembled that of creosote.