TOBACCO COUNTRIES 279 



the plough ; otherwise the whole countryside seemed 

 given up to grazing both of cattle and sheep, and we 

 tested it thoroughly, for we lost our way hopelessly in 

 a tangle of lanes between Ardee and Navan. 



At Navan we were among the famous grazings of 

 Meath, in the heart of that great sweep of grassland 

 so well known to hunting men, but we had come less 

 to see the cattle than the experiments in tobacco- 

 growing conducted by Sir Nugent Everard, whose 

 determination and ingenuity has done so much to 

 win back for this crop a place in British agriculture. 

 At the first blush one is inclined to think of tobacco 

 as a tropical or sub-tropical crop ; Havana, Manila, 

 India, Turkey leap to mind, even Kentucky and 

 Virginia enjoy summers with heat and sunshine that 

 we can only parallel in such favoured years as 1911. 

 But we are apt to over-estimate the importance of 

 sunshine to crop growth, for in some of the places 

 mentioned it is necessary to shade the tobacco to 

 obtain the highest quality of leaf; we also forget that 

 Germany, Holland, and Belgium, even Norway, grow 

 tobacco, not perhaps of high quality, but at least a 

 good merchantable article. Again, tobacco was once 

 a British crop ; we have spoken before of its destruc- 

 tion in Gloucestershire in Charles ll.'s time in the 

 interests of the Customs and of the proprietors of the 

 Virginia plantations, and less than a hundred years ago 

 it was grown commercially in Wexford and similarly 

 destroyed by legislative action in the interests of the 

 importers. 



However, speculations as to whether tobacco can be 

 grown in the United Kingdom are futile ; Sir Nugent 

 Everard and his colleagues do grow it grow it in 

 bulk for sale either pure or blended with foreign 

 tobacco. Irish cigars, cigarettes, and pipe tobacco are 



