HISTORY OF THE CIGARETTE.

Evening Star, Issue 13031, 15 August 1908, Page 8

HISTORY OF THE CIGARETTE.

The modern cigarette seems to have originated in Spain, where maize or other suitable vegetable envelopes for the tobacco being unobtainable, a thin sheet of paper was substituted. Thus the cigar and cigarette assumed distinct forms. A Spanish proverb declares that " a papelitos (a paper cigar), a glass of clear water, and a kiss from a pretty girl will sustain a man for a whole day." Th< dainty, unsubstantial, airy cigarette it tho natural smoke of the Latin people. Its use in this country dates from only some forty ysars ago. In 1845, a writer noted that the cigarette was smoked by foreign visitors only. The Crimean War of 1854-56 led majiy military and naval officers to, adopt this mode of smoking, then common in Malta, the Levant, Torkey, and Russia. The first well-known nerson who smoked cigarettes publicly in London was Laurence Oliphant, who had acquired the practice during his many years' residence in Russia. Turkey, and Austria. At that time smokers made their own cigarettes as thev needed them. About 1865 or 1866 the use of cirrarettes had so spread that manufacturers began to cater for sigaretto smokers. Even then manufacturers employed only a single man, usually a Pole or a Russian, to make ud cigarettes occasionally. Tho firm who now turn out the most cigor<tes in England at that time made only a few hundred pounds of tobacco a year into the dainty, paperenveloped rolls. The demand for cigarettes increased, and they are now turned out by machines, which are marvels of ingenuity, at the rate of POO to' 400 a minute. Rico paper, with which cigarettes are made, has nothing to do with rice, but is made from the membranes of the bread fruit tree, or more commonly of fine new trimminrs of flax and hemp. France makes cigarette naDers for the whole world, the outout of Austria and Italy being insignificant.