Birmingham.
Snuff and Tobacco.—It is perhaps not generally known that the custom of taking snuff is of Irish origin. In a "Natural History of Tobacco," in the Harleian Misc., i. 535., we are told that—
"The Virginians were observed to have pipes of clay before ever the English came there; and from those barbarians we Europeans have borrowed our mode and fashion of smoking.... The Irishmen do most commonly powder their tobacco, and snuff it up their nostrils, which some of our Englishmen do, who often chew and swallow it."
That the clay pipe was the original smoking apparatus in England, is evident from the following lines in Skelton's Eleanor Rummin. After lamenting the knavery of that age compared with King Harry's time, he continues:
"Nor did that time know,
To puff and to blow,
In a peece of white clay,
As you do at this day,
With fier and coale,
And a leafe in a hole," &c.