



YIELDING LATAKIA TOBACCO. 247 



appearance. I soaked a portion of one of these bundles in 

 boiling water, and was able to obtain specimens sufficiently com- 

 plete to ascertain with certainty that they did not belong to 

 Nicotiana rustica, but to some variety of N. Tdbacum. 



I applied to Mr. G-. J. Eldridge, Consul- General at Beyrout, 

 with a view of getting some authentic seed of the plant cultivated 

 at Latakia. This, with the greatest kindness, he was good 

 enough to obtain, although he was unable to send me the seed for 

 some months, owing to the existence of quarantine. The packet, 

 if sent, would have had to be pricked for the purpose of fumigation ; 

 and all the seed would have run out of the holes thus made. 



He was further good enough to inform me that " this kind of 

 tobacco owes its peculiar black colour and aromatic flavour to 

 its being submitted, during seven or eight months, to fumigation 

 of the wood of a shrub that grows wild in the Ansaryeh mountains, 

 called, locally, Elez'r," and belonging to Amentacece. 



I wrote to Mr. Eldridge to ask for some further information 

 about this plant ; and he was good enough to consult Dr. Post, the 

 Professor of Botany at the Syrian Protestant College at Beyrout. 

 He writes : 



" The plant alluded to under the name of ' el Ezr,' is probably 

 the tree called ' el Arz.' Such transpositions of letters are very 

 common in the colloquial Arabic. In classical use c el Arz f 

 refers to the famous Cedar of Lebanon, Larix Cedrus; but in 

 the mouths of uneducated Syrians it designates one of the 

 pine3, Pinus haleppensis, which grows in great numbers on the 



mountains." 



I therefore conclude that Latakia tobacco is produced by a 

 different species from the Turkish, and that, as imported into this 

 country, it consists of the flowering twigs made up into bundles 

 which have been smoked with pine-wood. 



