in the North- J-Fest of Europe. 
733 
comparison of the regulations issued for the Departments of the 
*' Nord " and the " Pas de Calais " shows that the dates fixed by 
the Government for some of the operations vary even in these 
adjoining districts. 
Humidity alone is not a fatal drawback to the growth of 
tobacco ; and mere growth, in the sense of size of the leaf, is but 
one element in the profitable production of manufactured to- 
bacco, the essential qualities being combustibility, flavour, and 
colour, in the order in which I have named them. Latitude 
seems to have very little to do with the question, for north of 
Stockholm, years ago, I saw tobacco grown with great success, so 
far as one can judge from its appearance in the field. What the 
plant requires, as I shall show presently, appears to be about 
three months of favourable growing weather, from the date of 
planting out the seedlings to the date of harvesting the mature 
leaves. Hot mists do not injure the plant, nor do gentle rains, 
but a hailstorm is utterly destructive. Where high winds are 
likely to prevail, tobacco is either not grown, or the plantations 
are artificially sheltered, as on the Dutch system, which I shall 
describe in the course of this paper. At the same time, a 
certain amount of sunshine is necessary to enable the plant to 
<levelop in its leaves the requisite but not superabundant amount 
of the essential oil which is its characteristic, and which gives 
it the distinctive value pertaining to it. 
The object of the experiments on the cultivation of tobacco 
which are now in progress, is to ascertain whether it holds out 
any reasonable hope for even a partial diminution of the pre- 
vailing agricultural depression, and a means of employing the 
surplus agricultural population without too great a cost to 
farmers and landowners. The movement is therefore partly 
commercial, and partly philanthropic. It may, however, be 
useful to trace, as far as the data at my command will permit 
me, the progress, whether forward or retrograde, of tobacco- 
cultivation in Holland, Belgium, and the North of France, 
within recent years. Unfortunately it is impossible to give 
parallel statistics for each country, so that the separate state- 
ments must be considered individually, and each one on its own 
merits. 
In the Netherlands, the average extent of land planted with 
tobacco in the years 1851-60 was 1760 hectares ; in 1861-70 it 
was 1711 ; in 1871-80 it fell to 1676 hectares on the average of 
:he ten years, the middle of that decade having been the com- 
nencement of the still prevailing agricultural depression. The 
iverage for the years 1881-82 was only 1298 hectares, for 1883 
he slightly diminished area of 1248 hectares, and for 1884 a 
small excess, raising it to 1272 hectares. 
