no simple means are known by which the public might readily ascertain for themselves the purity in this respect of the water they drink.

Phosphorus is so violent a poison that a case has recently occurred of death being caused by the administration of the quantity scraped from seven or eight lucifer matches; and society has had within a few years past to deplore the deaths of many children arising from their sucking lucifer matches carelessly left within their reach; it is therefore with great pleasure that I have lately heard of the manufacture of matches into the composition of which no phosphorus enters.

Mr. Mitscherlich has published a very simple process for discovering the most minute trace of phosphorus. It consists in introducing into a flask connected with a U tube the fluid suspected of containing phosphorus, together with a small quantity of vitriol. On applying a gentle heat to this mixture a beautiful phosphorescent light is perceived in the lower part of the U tube, especially if that part of it is surrounded by a frigorific mixture.

Before concluding I wish to state that I am of opinion some legislative restrictions should be placed upon the free sale of poisons. As to the nature of those restrictions I cannot do better than lay before you the conclusions to which the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association came some two years ago.

Lastly, although I have not shrunk from shewing you the deficiencies of science, we must be struck with the progress which chemistry has recently made. Only fifty years ago there were but few, if any, poisons which could be discovered with any degree of nicety, and when we reflect that now most poisons, organic as well as mineral, can be detected in the small doses of from one-tenth, to one-ten-thousandth of a grain, we must feel astonished at the progress of Toxicology. But, for the tests to be carried out even with a much less degree of exactitude, they must be handled by persons of great practice and experience, who devote their whole attention to this branch of chemical science. Complicated cases of poisoning may happen, in which a thorough and minute acquaintance with the progress of chemistry is indispensable. Again, it has been discovered that saliva contains a principle which gives a red colour with the salts of per-oxide of iron, one of the characteristic reactions of opium;

therefore how easy for a person to believe he had discovered opium where none existed. For these reasons I am of opinion that Government should specially appoint a sufficient staff of competent toxicologists, whose sole occupation should be to examine poisoning cases, and that a certain number should be named to act in concert in each instance.

By the adoption of this course unjust blame to science would be avoided neither should we be under the necessity of grieving for the consequences which arise, when the investigation of such cases is entrusted to persons who are not thoroughly acquainted with the subject; nor of doubting the justice of a sentence by which the innocent were acquitted or the guilty condemned.

NOTES ON CLAY PIPES: THEIR USES AND FORMS,

MAKERS AND DATES.

By Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith.

(READ 8TH MARCH, 1860.)

A short paper upon this subject, by the late Mr. A. J. Lamb, appeared in the third vol. of this Society's Proceedings.* It contains some useful memoranda, some additions to which I propose laying before you on this occasion.

The custom of smoking is of undoubted antiquity in America, if not in other quarters of the globe: an ancient Mexican legend asserts tobacco to have been smoked at the creation of man; and, allowing a wide margin for the tradition, it yet establishes the very early use of the narcotic on the American continent; † the infundibulum of the Romans, if not of analogous shape to ours, was probably used in the same fashion; and in the "Northern "Antiquities" of Bartholinus, a representation is given of an old stone effigy of Odin, from whose mouth projects a pipe, said to be precisely similar to that reported as protruding from the skull of an Irish Celt, in a bog at Bannockstown, county Kildare. ‡

The exact date is uncertain, but from Humboldt and other authors we learn that tobacco was directly introduced into this country from the Caribbee Islands, where the pipe, and not the weed, bore the name, tabac, subsequently corrupted into tobacco. The first Englishman known to have smoked it, is Thomas Lane, Esq., Sir Walter Raleigh's first Governor of Virginia; but the earliest reference to smoking in England or her colonies occurs in a communication from a Mr. Hariot, also of Raleigh's colony, between the years 1559 and 1586. So early as 1597, however, the custom was so general, that we find Bishop Hall, in a satire on the "decline "of ancient hospitality," complaining of its formidable encroachment.

* Page 29.

+ Notes and Queries, 2 s., vol. ii, p. 124.

Dublin Penny Journal, vol. iv, p. 30.