PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR STEMS OR LEAVES. 



Lindley, figured in the Botanical Register (pi. 1592), 

 of which the seeds had been sent from Ispahan to the 

 Horticultural Society of London, as those of the best 

 tobacco cultivated in Persia, that of Schiraz. Lindley 

 did not observe that it corresponded exactly to N. alata, 

 drawn three years before by Link and Otto 1 from a 

 plant in the gardens at Berlin. The latter was grown 

 from seed sent by Sello from Southern Brazil. It is 

 certainly a Brazilian species, with a white elongated 

 corolla, allied to N. suaveolens of New Holland. Thus 

 the tobacco cultivated sometimes in Persia along with 

 the common species, is of American origin, as I declared 

 in my Geographical Botany of 1855. I do not under- 

 stand how this species was introduced into Persia. It 

 must have been from seed taken from a garden, or 

 brought by chance from America, and it is not likely 

 that its cultivation is common in Persia, for Olivier and 

 Bruguiere, and other naturalists who have observed the 

 tobacco plantations in that country, make no mention 

 of it. 



From all these reasons I conclude that no species of 

 tobacco is a native of Asia. They are all American, 

 except N. suaveolens of New Holland, and N. fragrans 

 of the Isle of Pines to the south of New Caledonia. 



Several Nicotiance, besides N. Tabacum and N. rus- 

 tica, have been cultivated here and there by savages, 

 or as a curiosity by Europeans. It is strange that so 

 little notice is taken of these attempts, by means of 

 which very choice tobacco might be obtained. The 

 species with white flowers would yield probably a light 

 and perfumed tobacco, and as some smokers seek the 

 strongest tobaccos and the most disagreeable to non- 

 smokers, I would recommend to their notice N. angusti- 

 folia of Chili, which the natives call tabaco del diablo* 



1 Link and Otto, Icones Plant. Ear. Hort. Ber., in 4to, p. 63, t. 32. 

 Sendtner, in Flora Brasil, vol. x. p. 167, describes the same plant as 

 Sello, as it seems from the specimens collected by this traveller ; and 

 Grisebach, Symbolcs FL Argent., p. 243, mentions N. alata in the pro- 

 vince of Entrerios of the Argentine republic. 



8 Bertero, iu De Cand., Prodr., xii., sect. 1, p. 568. 



