14!0 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



in Mexico ^ and in the mounds of the United States ; 

 some of them represent animals foreign to North America.^ 



As the tobacco plant is an annual which gives a great 

 quantity of seeds, it was easy to sow and to cultivate or 

 naturalize them more or less in the neighbourhood of 

 dwellings, but it must be noted that different species of 

 the genus Nicotiana were employed in different parts 

 of America, which shows that they had not all the 

 same origin. Nicotiana Tahacum, commonly cultivated, 

 was the most widely diffused, and sometimes the only 

 one in use in South America and the West Indies. The 

 use of tobacco was introduced into La Plata, Paraguay,^ 

 and Uruguay by the Spaniards, consequently we must 

 look further to the north for the origin of the plant. 

 De Martins does not think it was indigenous in Brazil,* 

 and he adds that the ancient Brazilians smoked the 

 leaves of a species belonging to their country known 

 to botanists as Nicotiana Langsdorjii. When I went 

 into the question in 1855,^ I had not been able to dis~ 

 cover any wild specimens of Nicotiana Tahacum except 

 those sent by Blanchet from the province of Bahia, 

 numbered 3223, a. No author, either before or since that 

 time, has been more fortunate, and I see that Messrs. 

 Fluckiger and Hanbury, in their excellent work on 

 vegetable drugs,^ say positively, '• The common tobacco 

 is a native of the new world, though not now known 

 in a wild state." I venture to gainsay this assertion, 

 although the wild nature of a plant may always be 

 disputed in the case of a plant which spreads so easily 

 from cultivation. 



We find in herbaria a number of specimens gathered in 

 Peru without indication that they were cultivated or that 

 they grew near plantations. Boissier's herbarium contains 



* Tiedemann, p. 17, pi. 1. 



' The drawings on these pipes are reprodaoed in Naidaillac's recent, 

 ^ork, Les Premiers Hommes et les Temps Pr4historiques, vol. ii. pp. 

 45,48. 



» Tiedemann, pp. 38, 39. 



* Martins, Syst. Mat. Med. Bras., p. 120 ; Fl, Bras., vol. x. p. 191, 



• A. de Candolle, Oeogr. Bot. Raisonrx^e, p. 849. 



• Fluckiger and Hanburj, Pharmacographia, p. 418. 



