The Tobacco Plant 113 



It is upon agriculturists, not smokers, that the pro- 

 hibition weighs. As far as smokers are concerned 

 they have no grievance on the subject, for the lack 

 of heat and moisture essential to the growth of really 

 good tobacco would result in the production of leaf of 

 mediocre quality only. 



Two-thirds of all tobacco smoked in this country 

 came from the United States and the remaining 

 third from the four corners of the earth. The chief 

 tobacco-growing States are Kentucky, North Caro- 

 lina and Virginia, in the order named. Kentucky 

 produces more than half of the tobacco grown in 

 the States. There are more than sixty varieties of 

 American tobacco. 



Leaf for the old-fashioned, once and ever popular 

 shag — the purest and best of tobaccos — is grown in 

 Kentucky and South Indiana. Bird's-eye is prepared 

 from Virginian and North Carolinan tobacco. Vir- 

 ginian tobacco, the first introduced into England, is a 

 strong-flavoured, deep-mottled brown and unctuous 

 leaf. It is strictly a pipe tobacco, being unsuitable 

 for cigars and snuff. Maryland tobacco is light in 

 colour, and little smoked now. Florida supplies a 

 fine leaf used for cigar wrappers, and Connecticut a 

 coarse cigar-filling leaf. 



P^rique, the strongest of all tobaccos — a dark, 

 brown-black, fine-cut tobacco — is grown in Louisiana. 

 Its cultivation and preparation are in the hands of 

 one firm, who prepare only 175,000 pounds a year. 

 It was first raised by Pierre Chenet, of whose name 

 P^rique is a corruption ; he was one of Longfellow's 

 ' simple Acadian farmers,' who left Grand Prd for 



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