Varieties.—Most of the tobacco of coinmerce, as that of Virginia, and also that of India, is yielded by Nieotiana tabacum. N. latissima, 3/n//er, and N. fruticosa arc other species. N. Chinensis, Fischer, is the source, of the large Havanna!) cigars. N. rustica, L., indigenous in America, and now found wild in Europe, Asia, and Africa, is the source of the Latakia, (Laodicea), Salonica (Thessalonica), Syrian, and Turkey tobaccos. N. Persica, Lindley, is the Persian or Shiraz tobacco ; N. repanda, IV., is the source of the small Havannah or Queen's cigars ; and besides these are the species N. quad rivalvis, Pirsi.; N. nana, Lind/ey; N. multivalvis, Lindley.
Several of the species and varieties are grown in the south and east of Asia, and in the Archipelago. Dr. Birdwood says that N. tabacum is culti vated in the Dekhan, and N. rustica northwards ; also that N. Persica has been introduced into Bombay ; and in the years 1860 to 1870, the seeds of the Shiraz, Havannah, Manilla, and Maryland species and varieties were largely distributed throughout British India. In China, N. fruticosa and N. rustica, Var. Chinensis, seein to be the plants cultivated.
Manufacture. —The soils in which the species are grown have a great influence over the chemical components of the leaf, but the various processes followed in plucking the leaves, and curing and manufacturing them into the market able forms of tobacco, also greatly modify its quality.
Tobacco, as it occurs in commerce, is of a deep yellowish-brown colour, soft, and pliable, a little clammy, with something of a honey, mixed with a narcotic, odour ; the latter, however, is not obvious in the fresh leaves. The taste is bitter, acrid, and nauseous. But the peculiar and characteristic narcotic principle of this leaf is developed, after collecting', by a fermentative process, promoted by moistening the leaves with syrup or brine.
Culture. —The tobacco plant delights in rich forest soil, particularly where limestone prevails, on account of the potassium compounds which abound in soils of woodlands, and also because in the clearings of the forests greater atmospheric humidity prevails, needful for the best develop ment of the finest kinds of tobacco.
Various districts, with various soils, produce very different sorts of tobacco, particularly aa far as flavour is concerned ; and various climatic conditions will greatly modify the tobacco plant in this respect. Thus, for instance, we cannot
hope to produce Manilla or Havannah tobacco colder climates. Virgin soil with rich loam is the best for tobacco culture, and such soil should always contain a fair proportion of lime and potash, or should be enriched with a calcareous manure and ashes, or with well-decomposed stable manure. It does not answer to continue tobacco culture beyond two years on the mune soil unin terruptedly.
Latakia tobacco, according to Dyer, is prepared by submitting the leaves for several mouths to fuinigation from fir-wood.
In most of the countries warm of tho East Indies, tobacco is smoked in the form of rolled cheroots or cigars or cigarettes, and the natives readily improvise a cigar or pipe, by rolling the green leaf of a tree into the form of a cone, aud filling it as a pipe is filled. In Bengal generally, and in Persia, the pure tobacco is rarely smoked ; but various compounds are made and smoked in hookahs of various forins, the Nargyle or Narjil of Persia, the hubble-bubble of British India generally, rind the highly ornamental hookah. Nargyle is a word derived from Narel, a cocoa nut, for the primitive form of hookah is the narel or hubble-bubble, a hollow cocoanut shell half filled with water. On one side of the shell is inserted a pipe, which is connected with the fire pan and tobacco-holder (chillam); and on the other side is inserted another tube, which goes into the mouth of the smoker. 1Vhen the smoker draws, the smoke from the first pipe (the end of which is under water) is drawn up with a bub bling noise through the water, and is thus cooled and purified. The coil of flexible tube (necha) of the more elaborate hookah is made of a long coil of iron wire covered with cloth and ornamented ; this was invented in Akbar's time. A hookah for smoking madhan (opiuni), with a peculiar-shaped chillam, is called Madhaki. In Lower Bengal the lower orders frequently smoke in companies, with one hubble-bubble or narel or kalli, which are the most ordinary and cheap forms. All sitting round in a ring, the pipe passes from ono to another, each taking a few whiffs as it passes. This is never done by the higher orders, nor is it done in Hindustan. The sulfa!' form of hookah is the commonest in Kabul and Peshavrur.