270 



PART II. 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. A Botanical, Historical, and Practical Treatise on the 

 Tobacco Plant, in which the Art of growing and curing Tobacco 

 in the British Isles is made familiar to every Capacity, as deduced 

 from the Observations of the Author in the United States of 

 America, and his Practice in Field Cultivation in Ireland. By 

 Thomas Brodigan, Esq. London. 8vo. 7*. 



This work affords what may be considered a very fair specimen of pro- 

 vincial book-compiling. The author sets to work without being aware of 

 what books, English, French, or German, have already been written on 

 the subject. He speaks of Carver's Treatise as being the only one he has 

 heard of; but even that he could not get, though he " had it searched 

 for through all the booksellers, and old book repositories, of the Irish 

 metropolis." (p. 128.) He contents himself, therefore, with borrowing, 

 at second-hand, from our Encyclopaedias, and from the Encyclopaedia Bri- 

 tannica. Had he told his Dublin agent to look into Watts's Bibliotheca, 

 under the art. Tobacco, he would at least have made himself acquainted 

 with the titles of books on the subject ; and, among no inconsiderable 

 number, he would have found A Historical Essay by Tatham, 8vo, 1800, 

 now before us, which would have elucidated many points of which he 

 seems to know very little. What surprises us most, however, is, that Mr. 

 Brodigan should have grown tobacco on a considerable scale in Ireland, with- 

 out even knowing the name of the species or variety he cultivated. Surely, 

 one or other of the curators of the Dublin botanic gardens could have sup- 

 plied his book-searcher there with this information. The same curators 

 would also, we have no doubt, have lent him a modern edition of Miller's 

 Dictionary, and saved him the trouble of copying nine species without spe- 

 cific names, but with the definitions in use before the time of Linnaeus. It 

 is difficult to conceive how any man of the slightest pretensions to literature 

 could be ignorant that such a mode of describing species has been out of 

 use for a century. If he had looked into Martin's edition of Miller's Dic- 

 tionary, 1807, he would have found something very different to quote under 

 his head of botanical classification and character ; or why not content him- 

 self with copying that given in Rees's Cyclopaedia ? The book has one 

 valuable part, however, and that is the account of the author's experience in 

 Ireland ; the substance of this we shall communicate. 



Tobacco was introduced into the county of Cork, with the potato, by 

 Sir Walter Ralegh ; but the culture of the former does not appear to have 

 made much progress, though, according to Humboldt, it preceded that of 

 the potato, in Europe, more than 120 years, having been extensively culti- 

 vated in Portugal at the time that Sir Walter Ralegh brought it from Vir- 

 ginia to England, in 1586. A writer in 1725, quoted by Brodigan, says, 

 " I have not heard that a rood of tobacco was ever planted in this kingdom." 

 An act of George III. repealed several preceding acts that prohibited the 

 growth and produce of tobacco in Ireland, and this is the foundation on 

 which Ireland now rests her claim to that branch qf culture. Until the 



