240 NARCOTIC USAGES AKD SUPERSTITIONS 



and lastly, the preparation of the yellow leaves, which are merely 

 rubbed to pieces, and then put into the pipe, so peculiar, that they 

 could not possibly derive all this from America by way of Europe, 

 especially as India, where the practice is not so general, intervenes 

 between Persia and China." But the opinions of Dr. Meyen, for- 

 merly Professor of Botany m the University of Berlin, are worthy 

 of still greater weight, set forth as they are, alike on Archadogical 

 and Botanical grounds. In his " Gntndriss dcr HflanzengRographkeJ? 

 or " Outlines of the Geography of Plants," recently translated for 

 the Bay Society, he observes : " It has long been the opinion, that the 

 use of tobacco, as well as its culture, was peculiar to the people of 

 America, but this is now proved to be incorrect by our present more 

 exact acquaintance with China and India The consumption of 

 tobacco in the Chinese empire is of immense extent, and the prac- 

 tice seems to be of great antiquity, for on very old sculptures I have 

 observed the very same tobacco pipes which are still used. Besides 

 we now know the plant which furnishes the Chinese tobacco, it is 

 even said to grow wild in the East Indies. It is certain that this 

 tobacco plant of eastern Asia is quite different from the American 

 species. The genus jNicotiaua, generally speaking, belongs to the 

 warmer zones, yet a few species of it have a very extensive area, and a 

 great power of resisting the influence of climate, for they can be grown 

 under the equator, and in the temperate zone, even far above 55° north 

 latitude, where the mean summer heat is equal to 15.87° Cels. 

 The southern polar limit for the culture of tobacco is not exactly 

 known, but it seems to extend to the 40th degree of latitude, for in 

 south America tobacco is cultivated at Conception, and in New Zea- 

 land enough is grown for the consumption there."* 



To India, then, Dr. Meyen inclines, with others, to refer the 

 native habitat of an Asiatic tobacco, which he thus affirms to have 

 been in use by the Chinese as a narcotic, and consumed by inhaling 

 its smoke through a pipe, altogether independent of the introduc- 

 tion of this luxury to Europe by the discoverers of America in the 

 fifteenth century. "While the Turk still chews the opium in which 

 he so freely indulges, the Chinese, and also the Malays smoke it, 

 most frequently using as a pipe a bamboo, which serv-s also for a 

 walking stick, and requires a very slight operation to convert it into 

 an opium pipe. The Chinese opium smoker secures the utmost effects 

 of that powerful narcotic by swallowing the smoke; and notwith- 

 standing this mode of using the narcotic derived from the poppy is 



* Meyen's Outlines of the Geography of Plants. Ray Society. Pago.'JGl. 



