THE CULTIVATION AND FERTILIZATION OF 

 TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES. 



By WILLIAM S. MYERS, D.Sc., New York. 



THE medicinal properties and modes of preparation 

 of tobacco have been the subjects of many authors, 

 and this " queen of plants " has, within a few hundred 

 years, risen to the position of a wonderful article of com- 

 merce and a source of great fortunes, as well as a source 

 of pleasure to thousands of people. The North Ameri- 

 can Indians, who first used it, called the plant " Uppo- 

 woc." They were said by the earlier Spanish writers 

 to have smoked themselves into insensibility, and appa- 

 rently the Indians obtained more violent and peculiar 

 effects than Europeans usually find from its use. 



John Rolfe, who married Princess Pocahontas, was 

 the pioneer English tobacco planter of Virginia, and it 

 is stated that he began to grow the plant about the year 

 1606 in the " Old Dominion," but in 1639 the Grand 

 Assembly of Virginia passed a law restricting the amount 

 of tobacco which might be grown in the Commonwealth. 

 In the early days of the Colony tobacco was frequently 

 used as legal currency. From that time onwards the 

 cultivation of tobacco spread throughout the world, and 

 soon the use of snuff and other modes of consuming it 

 became almost universal. 



Areas of Production. 



The principal areas of tobacco production in the 

 United States are in Kentucky, North Carolina, Vir- 

 ginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Con- 

 necticut, South Carolina, Indiana, Maryland, West 

 Virginia, and Massachusetts. 



