SETCHELL] ABORIGINAL TOBACCOS 40! 



is uncertain, since it is not known in the wild condition in any of the 

 countries where it is under cultivation. It seems probable that it 

 may have originated in the interior of Brazil and possibly somewhere 

 on the lower eastern slopes of the Andes. It is very evidently a 

 tropical species and in the tropics often becomes spontaneous, escap 

 ing from cultivation and persisting in favorable localities. Some 

 varieties are semi-hardy in regions of little frost, but frostless and 

 humid areas are evidently similar to its ancestral home. Edward 

 Palmer found it in Indian cultivation in southern Arizona under the 

 name of " Yaqui Tobacco." x This " Yaqui Tobacco " is referred by 

 Gray to the var. undulata Sendtner. North of Mexico, however, 

 Nicotiana Tabacum was practically unknown in aboriginal use. 



The yellow-flowered tobacco, Nicotiana rustica L., was the second 

 species of tobacco to attract the notice of Europeans and for some 

 time almost monopolized attention. This was the first species of 

 tobacco to be cultivated in the Colony of Virginia. It was fairly 

 soon supplanted there, however, by a variety of Nicotiana Tabacum 

 called " Orinoco," introduced, it is said, by Sir Walter Raleigh, or 

 through his recommendation. Nicotiana rustica is still the home 

 grown species of the peasants of Central Europe and still furnishes 

 the Syrian " Tombac " for the water-pipes of western Asia. It is a 

 much more hardy species than is Nicotiana Tabacum and has been 

 credited with being a native of the Old World. There seems to be 

 no exact evidence, however, that this is so, and, although it has not 

 been found in undoubted wild condition, the general supposition is 

 that it probably originated in Mexico. It seems fairly certain that it 

 is American and probably Cordilleran like all its near relatives of the 

 Rustica section of the genus Nicotiana. Like Nicotiana Tabacum, 

 N. rustica was described and figured in pre-Linnean herbals, espe 

 cially in certain of those of the sixteenth century, where it was desig 

 nated as the lesser or female tobacco, while N. Tabacum was called 

 the greater or male tobacco. 



Nicotiana rustica seems to have been cultivated and smoked by 

 all of the Indian tribes of North America east of the Mississippi 

 River and by most of those immediately to the west of it. The west- 



1 Gray, Synoptical Flora of North America, vol. 2, pt. i, New York, 1878, 

 p. 241. 



