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The World's Commercial Products 



reported to yield the variety known as Orinoco. The subject of the botanical source of the 

 chief commercial tobaccos will be more fully dealt with later. 



The question as to the original home of so important a plant as tobacco — using the term 

 to include the three species mentioned — is naturally one of very great interest, and has given 

 rise to a considerable amount of discussion. Briefly stated, the question resolves itself into 

 deciding between the claims of the Old and the New World as the home of the plant which is 

 now equally common in both. For a very long time, indeed up to the middle of last century, 

 it was by no means certain that truly wild plants of at any rate AT". Tabacum had ever been 

 gathered in America by botanists, and Fliickiger and Hanbury in their great work on the 

 History of Drugs stated that " the common tobacco is a native of the New World, though 

 not now known in a wild state." Later, however, evidence was forthcoming for the occurrence 

 of the plant in the wild condition. 



With regard to N. rustica, many botanists have been inclined to ascribe to this plant an 

 Eastern origin, and the plant most certainly has the appearance of being perfectly wild in many 

 districts of the Old World. But authors of the sixteenth century spoke of this species as a 

 plant introduced from foreign countries, and there can be little doubt that its occurrence 

 under apparently perfectly natural and wild conditions is due to its escape from cultivation. 

 The evidence for a non-American origin of tobacco appears, therefore, to be of a very slight 

 character, and De Candolle sums up the question in characteristic fashion. He finds that of 

 all the numerous species of the genus Nicotiana found in a wild state, only two are foreign to 

 America, and both of these occur in Australasia : N. suaveolens of Australia, and N. fragrans, 

 found in the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia. Further, in the contention that all Eastern 

 peoples are great lovers of tobacco, and have indulged in the habit of smoking from very 

 early times, he finds no support for the Asiatic origin of the tobacco plant, for the narcotic 

 "smoked " was quite different from tobacco and was derived from a variety of plants, one 

 of, the most commonly used being "bhang," the dried leaves of Indian hemp (Cannabis sativa). 

 Again, the writings of travellers in. the East up to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries make 

 no mention of ;tobacco and,- in factj we are in possession of no certain evidence concerning the 

 use of tobacco in Asia until the seventeenth century, i.e., until after the introduction of the 

 plant into Europe. Taking, therefore, these facts into account, we are forced to the conclusion 

 that tobacco reached the East via Europe, i.e., ultimately from America.,* 



-Evidence of a very valuable kind in determining the home of a plant is afforded by a study 

 of the names under which the plant is known in different parts of the world. If a plant has a 

 wide distribution and has been known in different countries from the most remote times, it will 

 almost certainly -receive names which etymologically are distinct. Now in the case of tobacco, 

 the plant is known throughout the New World by names which can be very readily recognised 

 as mere corruptions of " tobacco," a word which, as we shall see later, is of undoubted American 



