CULTIVATED PLANTS. 158 



earlier date In Tuscany, at the present time, poppies are 

 extensively sown for roedicinal purposes, for the extraction of oil 

 from the seeds for the use of artists, and also when olive oil is 

 scarce to supply its place as a condiment, or for burning, or making 

 soap, &c. Its seeds are also eaten, but the climate is not hot 

 enough to grow it for the extraction of opium. 



There is no plant, observes Prof. Targioni, whose history shows 

 so many vicissitudes as that of the Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). 

 Imported from America soon after the discovery of that continent, 

 it was received into the old world with a species of enthusiasm, 

 and Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans began everywhere to 

 smoke, to chew, and to snuff. It was not long, however, before 

 some of the evils and inconveniences involved in the practice 

 began to appear, and a host of enemies were raised up against it. 

 Theologists pronounced it an invention of Satan which destroyed 

 the efficacy of fasting, a point much disputed in the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries. Councils forbade it to all ecclesiastics 

 under their control. Popes Ui'ban VIII. and Innocent XI. 

 punished the use of it with excommunication ; Sultan Amurat IV. 

 with the most cruel kinds of death ; Schah Abbas II. with penal- 

 ties almost as severe ; Michael Feodorovitch Tourieff ordered a 

 bastonade for the first offence, cutting off the nose for the second, 

 and the head for the third offence : Prussia and Denmark simply 

 prohibited, and James, of England, wrote against it. Finding, 

 however, that no penalties, however severe, could check the 

 indulgence in a luxury so highly appreciated, sovereigns and their 

 governments soon found it much more advantageous to turn it 

 into a source of revenue, and the cultivation and manufacture of 

 tobacco was gradually subjected almost everywhere to fiscal 

 regulations, restrictions, or monopolies, which still prevail under 

 various forms over the greater part of Europe. In Tuscany its 

 growth was prohibited, except in a few localities where it was 

 allowed under certain restrictions from 1C4.5 till 1789, when the 

 enlightened Grand Duke Peter Leopold declared free the culti- 

 vation of tobacco over the whole territory. But the country did 

 not long enjoy this privilege ; the intrigues of private speculators 

 prevailed on Ferdinand III. to restrict it to the same localities 

 only which had previously possessed it. The number of these 

 was further reduced in 18'^6, and the permission totally with- 

 drawn in 1830, and tobacco is now only grown here and there by 

 stealth. 



Tobacco was in such general use in America when first dis- 



