ANTIQUITY OF SMOKING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2014, 12 June 1885, Page 2

ANTIQUITY OF SMOKING.

Small tobacco-pipes of an ancient form are frequently found in Irol&od on digging and ploughing up % ground, particularly in the Vicinity of those ciroulai entrenchments galled; Danish forts, which were most probably the villages or settlements of the native Irish. In tho first voh\#;of the " is a print of one whicfi was found at Barijiocksfcon, county Kildare, sticking between the teeth of a human skull; and it isaccompanied,fey a paper which, on the authority of Herodotus, Strabo, romponiuj, JJela, and Solinus, goes to P r °ve that ; the northern nations of Europe were acquainted with tobacco, or a herb of similar properties, and that they smoked it, through small tubes-of course long before the existence of America was known, The arguments in favor of the antiquity of smoking receive additional support from the discovery of seyeralsmallqlay pipes iu the hull of a ship found some years since when excavating a new duice way at the upper : end of the Pairwater at Dantzig. The ship was discovered buried in, the ground at the depth of about 20ft,. .A. box of tobacco pipes, was found, all whole, with heads about the size of a thimble, and tubes, from %to Gin in length. - It is supposed the vessel had been lost in some convulsion of nature proylous to the foundation of the city, which hall been : built over the spot,at least five hundred years since.