Sir G.W.  Forrest, in his book on “The Indian Mutiny,” tells how at the siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, “the tea and sugar, except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted.  The tobacco also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the want of it.  The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day’s work, and smoked dry leaves as the only substitute they could obtain.”  Mr. L.E.R.  Rees in his diary of the same siege noted—­“I have given up smoking tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also constantly using.”  The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the margosa.  It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to possess febrifugal properties.

Among the general mass of the population in the early Victorian period, smoking, though certainly not so all-prevailing as now, was yet very common.  It is highly probable that one of the things which led to the great increase in pipe-smoking which took place from this time onwards was the introduction of the briar pipe.

The earliest example of the use of a wooden pipe I have met with is dated 1765—­but this was not in England.  Many years ago the late Mr. A.J.  Munby pointed out that Smollett, in one of his letters dated March 18, 1765, giving an account of his journey from Nice to Turin, describes how he ascended “the mountain Brovis,” and on the top thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures:  “He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes.  His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke.”  This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of his smoking apparatus was of a piece with the singularity of his attire.

Mr. Munby, after this reference to Smollett’s adventure, proceeded to claim the honour of having helped to bring the use of wooden pipes into England.  In the year 1853 he wrote, “meerschaums and clays were the rule at both the English universities and in all shops throughout the land, and the art of making pipes of wood was either obsolete [it had never been introduced] or wholly in futuro.  But a college friend of mine, a Norfolk squire, possessed a gardener who was of an inventive turn, though he was not a Scotchman.  This man conceived and wrought out the idea of making pipes of willow-wood, cutting the bowl out of a thick stem, and the tube out of a thinner one growing from the bowl, so that the whole pipe was in one piece.  Willow-wood is too soft, so that the pipes did not last long; but they were a valuable discovery, and the young squire’s friends bought them eagerly at eighteenpence apiece.”

This experiment in the direction of wooden pipes was interesting, and deserves to be remembered; but it was not long before the briar was introduced and carried everything before it.