144 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Japan by the Portuguese, and according to early travellers 

 quoted by Tiedemann, this was at the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century. Lastly, the Chinese have no original 

 and ancient sign for tobacco ; their paintings on china 

 in the Dresden collection often present, from the year 1700 

 and never before that date, details relating to tobacco, 1 

 and Chinese students are agreed that Chinese works do 

 not mention the plant before the end of the sixteenth 

 century. 2 If it be remembered with what rapidity the 

 use of tobacco has spread wherever it has been intro- 

 duced, these data about Asia have an incontestable force. 



C. The common names of tobacco confirm its 

 American origin. If there had been any indigenous 

 species in the old world there would be a great number 

 of different names; but, on the contrary, the Chinese, 

 Japanese, Javanese, Indian, Persian, etc., names are 

 derived from the American names, petum, or tabak, 

 tabok, tamboc, slightly modified. It is true that Pid- 

 dington gives Sanskrit names, dhumrapatra and tam- 

 rakouta? but Adolphe Pictet informs me that the first of 

 these names, which is not in Wilson's dictionary, means 

 only leaf for smoking, and appears to be of modern com- 

 position; while the second is probably no older, and 

 seems to be a modern modification of the American 

 names. The Arabic word docchan simply means smoke. 4 



Lastly, we must inquire into the two so-called Asiatic 

 Nicotiance. The one, called by Lehmann Nicotiana 

 chinensis, came from the Russian botanist Fischer, who 

 said it was Chinese. Lehmann said he had seen it in a 

 garden. Now, it is well known how often an erroneous 

 origin is attributed to plants grown by horticulturists; 

 and besides, from the description, it seems that it was 

 simply N. Tabacum, of which the seeds had perhaps 

 come from China. 5 The second species is N. persica, 



1 Klemm, quoted by Tiedemann, p. 256. 



2 Stanislas Julien, in de Candolle, Geogr. Bot. Rais., p. 851; 

 Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 17. 



3 Piddirigton, Index. * Forskal, p. 63. 



4 Lehmann, Historia Nicotinarum, p. 18. The epithet suffruticosa 

 is an exaggeration applied to the tobaccos, which are always annual. I 

 have said already that N. suffruticosa of different authors is N. Tabacum, 



