CHAPTER I. 
THE TOBACCO PLANT. 
© OBACCO is a hardy flowering annual* plant, 
growing fr eely i in a moist fertile soil and requiring, 
the most thorough culture in order to secure the’ 
“finest form and quality 0 of leaf. It is a native of the 
tropics and under the intense rays of a vertical sun develops 
its finest and most remarkable flavor which far surpasses the 
varieties grown in a temperate region. It however readily 
adapts itself to soil and climate growing through a wide 
range of temperature from the Equator to Moscow in Rus- 
sia in latitude 56°, and through all the unereening mange 
of climate t. wot ete ee 
The plant varies in height according to species and locality ; 
the largest varieties reaching an altitude of ten or twelve feet, 
in others not growing more than two or three feet from the 
ground. Botanists have enumerated between forty and fifty 
varieties of the tobacco plant who class them all among the 
narcotic poisons.. When properly cultivated the plant ripens 
in a few weeks growing with a rapidity hardly equaled by 
any product either temperate or tropical. Of the large 
number of varieties cultivated scarcely more than one-half 
are grown to any great extent while many of them are hardly 
known outside of the limit of cultivation. Tobacco is a 
strong growing plant resisting heat and drought to a far 
* The greater number of the species are annual plants; but two at least are perennial; the 
Nicotiana fruticosa, which is a shrub, a native of the Cape of Good Hope, and of China; and 
WN. urens, a native of South America, 
+Tatbam says that the tobacco plant is peculiarly adapted for an agricultural comparison 
of climates. 
