PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIE STEMS OR LEAVES. 139 



There is the same doubt as to whether it is indigenous 

 in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt (an essentially cultivated 

 country), in Nubia, and even in Guinea, where specimens 

 have been gathered.-^ It is even possible that the area of 

 this shrub extends from India to Nubia. Such a wide 

 geographical distribution is, however, always somewhat 

 rare. The common names may furnish some indication. 



A Sanskrit name, sakachera,^ is attributed to the 

 species, but as it has left no trace in the different modern 

 languages of India, I am inclined to doubt its reality. 

 The Persian name hanna is more widely diffused and 

 retained than any other (hina of the Hindus, hev^neh and 

 alhenna of the Arabs, kinna of the modern Greeks). 

 That of cypros, used by the Syrians of the time of 

 Dioscorides,^ has not found so much favour. This fact 

 supports the opinion that the species grew originall}^ 

 on the borders of Persia, and that its use as well as 

 its cultivation spread from the East to the West, from 

 Asia into Africa. 



Tobacco — Nicotiana Tahacum, Linnaeus ; and other 

 species of Nicotiana. 



At the time of the discovery of America, the custom 

 of smoking, of snuff-taking, or of chewing tobacco was 

 diffused over the greater part of this vast continent. 

 The accounts of the earliest travellers, of which the 

 famous anatomist Tiedemann ^ has made a very complete 

 collection, show that the inhabitants of South America 

 did not smoke, but chewed tobacco or took snuff, except 

 in the district of La Plata, Uruguay, and Paraguay, 

 where no form of tobacco was used. In North America, 

 from the Isthmus of Panama and the West Indies as far 

 as Canada and California, the custom of smoking was 

 universal, and circumstances show that it was also very 

 ancient. Pipes, in great numbers and of wonderful work- 

 manship, have been discovered in the tombs of the Aztecs 



^ Oliver, ¥1. of Trop. Afr., ii. p. 483. 

 ' Piddington, Index. 



• Dioscorides, 1, c. 124 ; LeBZ, Bot. d. Alien, p. 177. 



* Tiedemann, Geschichte des Tahaks, in 8vo, 1854. For Brazil, see 

 Martins, Beitrage zur Ethnographie und SprachJcunde Amerilcas, i. p. 719. 



