TOBACCO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10593, 28 February 1895, Page 6

TOBACCO.

The first European tobacco was grown in Portugal in 1520. The tobacco plant is a member of the nightshade family. Oculists say that one form of blindness is caused bv smoking. About 220,000,000 cigars are annually exported from Havana. The tobacco leaf is said to require about twelve weeks to cure.

The value of the leaf tobacco exported from tho United States in 1890 was £4,128.000. The ash of tobacco is large, varying from 16 to 30 per cent in the different kinds.

The colour of snuff depends on the extent to which fermentation has been allowed to go. The ■ French Government has had a monopoly of the tobacco business ever since 1816.

The poorer and cheaper varieties of snuff are Sometimes made from refuse stems and leaves.

The seed capsules of the tobacco plant are provided with valves for the escape of the seeds.

Turkish and some other eastern tobaccos are only used as .fine-cut for cigarettes and pipes. The flowers of some species of the tobacco plant open only at sunset and close at sunrise.

The clay pipes of England, France and Holland are mostly made by the labour of children.

Instances have bean known of lime being added to snuff to increase its dryness and pungency. The annual consumption of tobacco in tho United States is about sixty ounces to each inhabitant.

Most of the Indian pipes of the United States axe made of the red steatite, founds in the north-west.

In-1616 Virginia colonists made a law that no one should neglect food crops in order to plant tobacco.

Nitrate of potash or soda is sometimes added to smoking tobacco to increase the combustibility. The tobacco from Manilla is generally used only in the kind of cigars properly called cheroots.

Of late years, Florida tobacco has acquired a reputation as an excellent variety for cigars. Europe produces every year about 500,000,0001 b, of which Austria grows about one-third.

Many brands of smoking tobacco have their odour increased by the addition of cascarilla bark.

Some Syrian tobacco has so small a percentage of nicofcia that this principle can barely, b,e detected., Tobacdoiseads are so minute that it is said a thimbleful will furnish enough plants for an acre of ground. The quality of Cuban tobacco is so fine that Mulhall soya it sells at prices varying from £2OO to £BOO a ton. Since the Franeo-Prusaiah war the use of tobacco has increased in France to an extent never before known.

Dry snuffs are prepared from tobacco that has been subjected to a high temperature before the leaf is ground.

France imports from the United States nearly one-half of the tobacco manufactured in the Government factories. The choicest varieties of tobacco are raised along the banks of such Cuban rivers as overflow every year. According to the internal revenue returns, the number of cigarettes made in the United States in 1890-91 was 2,877,799,440. In 1892 New Tork was the bast tobacco revenue State, paying 5,374,762d01s into the National Treasury on this score. The tobacco supplied by the French Government factories to the consumers is said to be the worst in the civilized world. Oil of bergamot and, attar of roses, together with orris root and rosewood, are all used to flavour ’ snuff and chowing tobacco. ;

The medicinal use of tobacco is almost wholly for external application, the nausea it causes preventing its internal employment.

Every man who smokes or chews helps to support the Government. In 1892 the United States Government revenues from tobacco were £6,200,000.

The people of Great Britain consume less tobacco per head than those of any other civilised country, only twenty-three ounces to the inhabitant. Since 1865 tho United States Government has collected in revenue on tobacco the stupendous sum of ,£179,300,000. The best year was 1882, £9,480,000. The Mohammedan world was once divided on the subject of smoking. Some theologians declared smoking to be worse than murder;

The Valley of the Connecticut Eiver produces a tobacco leaf so fine and silky that it is often exported to Cuba and other countries to use as a wrapper. ■ ’, Stanley found tobacco perfectly acclimatised among African tribes that had never seen a white man. Tho use of the weed is universe! in the Dark Continent.

Tobacco has tho power of relaxing the muscular system to a marked degree, and advantage has been taken of this property, both in medicine and surgery.. The adulteration of tobacco by the use of other leaves can always be decected by the microscope, aa, in structure, the, tobacco leaf varies materially from all others.

The hookah, or Oriental State pipe, is deemed of such importance that in the courts of princes a special functionary has no other duty than to keep it in order. Tobacco ’ were long considered almost a waste product, but will soon ba utilised in ways other than for fumigating greenhouses and to make.sbeep-wasb.

The dried leaf haa little of the aroma OS' the manufactured tobacco. This is developed by a kind cf fermentation' to which it is subjected in the warehouses of the manufacturers. •

Tobacco readily adjusts itself to circumstances, several States producing a leaf of such distinct character that a good judge can often, by an inspection, state where the leaf was raised.