152 CAMPHOR, TOBACCO 



before the war were Germany and the United States, but 

 many other countries also contributed to our needs, in all 

 about twenty- three. 



Of British countries India and Ceylon stood first, each 

 sending about the same amount, while Australia arid the 

 Cape of Good Hope and the West Indies sent smaller quantities. 

 The total value of the imports was over 1,000,000, of which 

 only 213,000 came from British Possessions. 



During the war our imports from British sources trebled, 

 and of this increase India bears the largest share, while at 

 home we have made a beginning in growing drug-plants such 

 as belladonna and foxglove, for which our climate is suitable. 



TOBACCO (Nicotiana tabacum). ' A custom loathcsomc to 

 the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous 

 to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest 

 resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is 

 bottomless.' Thus wrote King James, and in his dislike of 

 the practice of smoking he was not alone, many other rulers 

 doing their utmost, by scathing abuse and barbarous punish- 

 ments, to suppress the objectionable habit, but all in vain. 

 In spite of every discouragement the habit of smoking spread, 

 until now it is almost universal. 



The word ' tobacco ' is derived from tabaco, which was the 

 name for the pipe or tube in which the natives smoked the 

 dried leaves of the tobacco plant, and which the Spaniards 

 mistook for the name of the plant itself. 



Tobacco was introduced into this country by Sir John 

 Hawkins, though it was Sir Walter Raleigh who did most 

 to popularize it, by encouraging the cultivation of the plant 

 in his colony of Virginia ; we read of him that he ' tooke 

 a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to the scaffolde '. 



Jean Nicot (1530-1600), while French ambassador at Lisbon, 

 sent to his native country some tobacco plants which had 

 lately arrived from Florida, and later on botanists, in his 

 honour, gave the name Nicotiana to the genus of which 

 the American plant is a species. 



