IMPROVEMENT IN PLANTS. $1 
suppose) is a cup of sack, they think it be no bad physick.” 
Dr. William Barclay in his work on Tobacco, (1614) 
declares “that it worketh wonderous cures.” He not only. 
defends the herb but the “land where it groweth.” At this 
time the tobacco plant like Indian Corn was very small, 
possessing but few of the qualities now required to make it 
merchantable; When first exported to Spain and Portugal 
from the West Indies and South America, and even by the 
English from Virginia, the leaf was dark in color and strong 
and rank in flavor. This, however, seems to have been the 
standard in regard to some varieties while others are spoken 
of by some of the early writers upon tobacco as “sweet.” 
The tobacco (uppowoc) grown by the Indians in America, 
at the time of its discovery, and more particularly in North 
America, would compare better with the suckers of the 
largest varieties of the plant rather than with even the small- 
est species of the plant now cultivated. At the present time 
tobacco culture is considered a science in order to secure the 
colors in demand, and that are fashionable, and also the 
_ right texture of leaf now so desirable in all tobaccos designed 
for wrappers. Could the Indians, who cultivated the plant 
on the banks of the James, the Amazon and other rivers of 
America, now look upon the plant growing in rare luxuriance 
upon the same fields where they first raised it, they could 
hardly realize them to be the same varieties that they had 
previously planted. 
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