PLANTS AND MAN 
America did not smoke; they chewed tobacco or took 
snuff. In North America, however, from the Isthmus 
of Panama and the West Indies, as far as Canada and 
California, the custom of smoking was universal. It 
was the symbol of peace. 
Though the various Asiatic and European peoples are 
now great lovers of tobacco, none of them were acquainted 
with it before the discovery of America. At the begin¬ 
ning of the seventeenth century the tobacco plant was 
introduced into Turkey, the Persians soon afterward re¬ 
ceiving it from the Turks. John Nicot, from whom the 
plant gets its scientific name, saw it in Portugal in 1560. 
The Portuguese probably introduced it into India, where 
they were very influential at that time. 
Sugar-Cane (Saccharum officinarum ) : The sugar¬ 
cane is cultivated now in most of the warm regions of 
the globe. Various historical facts indicate that it was 
first grown in southern Asia, whence it spread into Africa 
and later into America. It originated probably in India, 
Cochin China, or the Malay archipelago. The Arabs 
in the Middle Ages carried it into Egypt, Sicily, and 
southern Spain, where it flourished widely until the com¬ 
petition of colonial sugar caused its cultivation to be 
abandoned. Don Henriquez transported sugar-cane 
plants from Sicily to the Madeira Islands, whence they 
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