TOBACCO CULTURE AND TRADE. Tobacco is the common name of the plants belonging to the Monopetalous genus Nicotiana. Tobacco was the name used by the Caribbees for the pipe in which they smoked ; but this word was transferred by the Spaniards to the herb itself. The genus Nicotiana contains about forty species, moat of them yielding tobacco for smoking, and many of them cultivated in the gardens of Europe. The name Nicotiana was given to these plants after Jean Nicot, of Nismes, in Languedoc, who was an agent of the king of France in Portugal, and there procured the seeds of the tobacco from a Dutchman who had procured them in Florida. Nicot sent them to France in 1560.
The botanical characteristics of the tobacco-plant are described under NICOTIANA in the NAT. HIST. Drv.; its medical uses are discussed under NICOTIANA TABACIIII in the present Division ; and its chemical properties under NthoTrxx. We need scarcely revert to the following points : that the common Virginian tobacco, the Nicotiana tabacum, is the chief kind ; and that the Orinoco, Turkish, and Persian are the kinds ranking next in extent of use.
Cultivation.—The cultivation of tobacco is most extensively carried on in the United States of America. The plant requires considerable beat to come to perfection ; but with care and attention, and by treat ing it as an exotic, it may be very successfully cultivated in much colder climates. The least frost injures it. The seeds of the tobacco plant are sown in a prepared seed-bed, and carefully protected from frost; for which purpose straw and fern are used. When once the danger of spring frosts is over, they may be safely transplanted into ground which has been laid in narrow beds with intervals between them, dug out deep, and richly manured with sheepre dung. These beds are two feet wide at top, and two feet six inches at bottom, with eloping sides to keep the earth up ; the intervals are only six or eight inches, and serve not only as drains to keep the beds dry, but as paths from which the surface of the beds may be stirred and weeded. Two rows of plants about eight inches high are planted at equal distances along the beds; the rows are sixteen or eighteen inches apart, and the plants at the same distance from each other. In warmer climates the plants are placed three feet apart, as there they grow to a much greater size, and cover more ground. A moist day is chosen for transplanting. The plants are taken up carefully with a small spade or trowel without shaking the earth much from the roots ; they are placed slanting in a shallow basket, and thus carried to the prepared beds ; they have a stem six or eight inches long. They are inserted into holes made by a proper instrument, so that the fibres of the roots and the ad hering earth may be completely buried up to the bottom of the stem. Four or six leaves should be on the plant; if more, the lowest are pinched ofE Great attention is paid to the beds all the time the tobacco is growing ; weeds are carefully eradicated, and the earth repeatedly stirred between the plants with hoes and narrow spades to accelerate the growth. When the plants acquire a certain size, the lower leaves are pinched off, to increase the bulk of the upper. A fine tobacco-plant should have from eight to twelve large succulent leaves, and a stem from three to six feet high ; the top is pinched off to pre vent its running and drawing the sap from the leaves, and lateral shoots are carefully pinched off as soon as they appear, to prevent branching.
A few plants are left for seed, and of these the heads are allowed to shoot the full length. The seeds are so small and so numerous on a plant, that a few plants produce a sufficiency of seed for the next crop. The plantations are continually examined, and every leaf injured by insects or otherwise is pulled off. Tobacco takes about four months from the time of planting to come to perfection ; that is, from May to September, when the leaves are gathered before there is any danger from frost : one single white frost would spoil the whole crop, and cause it to rot. As soon as the colour of the leaves becomes of a paler green inclined to yellow, they are fit to be gathered ; they then begin to droop, and emit a stronger odour, and feel rough and somewhat brittle to the touch. When the dew is evaporated and the sun shines, the leaves may be most advantageously gathered, which is done by cntting down the plant close to the ground, or even a little under the surface. They are left on the ground to dry till the evening, taking care to turn them often, that they may dry equally and more rapidly. They are housed before the evening dew falls, which would injure them, and laid up under cover in heaps to sweat during the night, and some mats are thrown over the heaps to keep in the heat. If they are very full of juice, they are sometimes carried out again the next day to dry in the sun ; but most commonly they are left to sweat for three or four days, and are then moved and hung up to dry in sheds which allow a thorough draught of air but keep out the rain. Every tobacco plantation has such buildings, proportioned to the extent of the culti vation. In some places the leaves are now stripped off the stems and strung on packthread to dry. In others the whole plant is hung on pegs placed in rows at regular distances, and fixed on laths which run across the building. When the plants are quite dry they are removed in moist or foggy weather ; for if the air is very dry the leaves would fall to dust. They are laid in heaps on hurdles and covered over, that they may sweat again, which they do but slowly. The heaps are care fully examined from time to time to see that they do not heat too much ; and, according to the season and the nature of the plants, whether more or less filled with sap, they remain so a week or a fortnight. If the leaves were not stripped off at first, they are taken off now, when the proper fermentation is completed. They are sorted; those which grow on the top of the stem, in the middle, and at the bottom, are laid separately, as being of different qualities. They are tied together in bundles of ten or twelve leaves, again dried carefully, ranged in casks horizontally, and pressed in, by means of a round board, by lever or screw, as soon as a certain quantity has been laid in; the pressure is equal to that of a weight of several tons. This is essential to the safe transportation of the tobacco; and it is thus that the great bulk of it arrives from the places where its cultivation is most extensive, as in America.