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XII. PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR NARCO- 

 TIC, BITTER AND TANNIN PRINCIPLE. 



I. T03ACCO. 



OF the plants which afford the narcotic principle, the most 

 important are the tobacco and the poppy, the former of which 

 is very extensively cultivated in some parts of this country as 

 an article of commerce. The home consumption of tobacco is 

 immense. The discovery of this plant is supposed to have 

 been made by FERNANDO CORTES, in Yucatan, in the Gulf of 

 Mexico, where he found it used universally, and held in a 

 species of veneration, by the simple natives. He made him- 

 self acquainted with the uses and supposed virtues of the plant, 

 and the manner of cultivating it, and sent plants to Spain, as 

 part of the spoils and treasures of his new found world. 



The Portuguese, however, were mainly instrumental in dif- 

 fusing the tobacco plant over Europe and the east. It was in- 

 troduced into France from Portugal, in the year 1560, by 

 JOHN NICOT, after whom the plant is named Nicotiana. 

 The history of the introduction of this plant into various coun- 

 tries, is very remarkable. It is known that this plant, seem- 

 ingly nauseous, has in spite of the most powerful opposition 

 in the face of pains and penalties imposed by legislative enact- 

 ments taken deep root, as it were, in every country; so that, 

 at the present time, it appears to have become apparently es- 

 sential to the comfort of the inhabitants. It required a long 

 series of unjust and intemperate laws to arrest its progress in 

 England, and its culture there is now directly prohibited, on 

 account of the great revenue derived from the importation of 

 the foreign commodity. This system is wrong; and the Eng- 

 lish nation will ere long see its utter fallacy. 



The species almost every where cultivated in America, is 

 the N. Tabdcum, or Virginia tobacco. It grows in all the 

 temperate zones to a high latitude. It is cultivated extensively 

 in Germany, France, and the low countries in Sweden, 

 Russia, and other parts of Europe in some parts of Asia, and 

 the islands that fringe its coast. The annual species may be 

 grown in every country and climate; for every country has a 

 summer, and that is the season of life for annual plants: but in 

 such countries it can never be made an object of profitable and 

 extensive culture. 



