13 SEPTEMBER 1873, Page 3

It is said that the French have utilised their Homeric

studies by the invention of a new form of smuggling. They have smuggled cigars into France in the bodies of their children's rocking-horses. The French police, struck by the sudden demand of French babies for wooden equitation, had one of them dis- embowelled, and discovered a large quantity of tobacco in the body of the plaything. Unfortunately for these classical smugglers, the guardians of the French Protective system were not so simple-minded as the guardians of the Trojan Protective system. They made the toy pay duty, instead of paying their duty to the toy.