some form or other is universally employed by all the nations among whom the herb is in use would appear to be a proof of its American origin.

The second theory of the non-American origin of tobacco is, that both it and its uses were well known in Africa, long before the discovery of the New World. This idea has recently found a warm, though by no means convincing advocate in Professor Wiener,1 of Harvard University. In his book Africa, and the Discovery of America, this writer takes up the perfectly tenable position that the negro has probably influenced the customs and beliefs of the aborigines of America much more than has usually been acknowledged. But, while this is reasonable enough, it cannot be said that he is on equally firm ground when he asserts that the negro slaves brought tobacco with them to America. In face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Professor Wiener states that the early explorers of the New World nowhere found tobacco in use.

His method of proof is simple, consisting of attempts to discredit undoubted descriptions of tobacco by early writers, and where this cannot be done, to ignore or misrepresent them. If the negroes of the West Coast of Africa were the inveterate smokers which he states they were, it is almost certain that one or more of the European explorers

1 Africa, and the Discovery of America, by Prof. Wiener.

in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries would have observed this strange custom and left some description of it, as was done in the case of America.

It may be concluded, then, that the original habitat of tobacco was America. Of approximately seventy varieties of Nicotiana known to exist, fourteen are still to be found in North America, either in a natural state, or in aboriginal cultivation, and nine of these are used by various tribes for ceremonial and religious purposes, although trade tobacco is used by these same tribes for smoking. The only two varieties of Nicotiana which are of undoubted extra-American origin are the Australasian Nicotiana suavolens and Nicotiana fragrans, neither of which was used for smoking, chewing or snuffing before the advent of the European.1

The two most important species of Nicotiana are Nicotiana rustica and Nicotiana tabacum. The former of these at first monopolized the attention of Europeans and was the variety which was indigenous to Virginia. As will be shown later, however, it was superseded in that province, early in the seventeenth century by a variety of Nicotiana tabacum. The first Secretary of the Colony of Virginia, William Strachey, Gentleman, in his Historie of Travaile into

"

1 American Anthropologist, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, Oct.-Dec., 1921: Aboriginal Tobacco," by W. A. Setchell.

Virginia Britannica,1 which describes that Province between 1610 and 1612, writes as follows: "There is here great store of tabacco, which the salvages call' Apooke'; howbeit, yt is not of the best kynd yt is but poore and weake and of a byting tast, yt growes not fully a yard above ground, bearing a little yellowe flower, like to hennebane, the leaves are short and thick, somewhat round at the upper end, whereas, the best tabacco of Trinidado and the Oronoque is large, sharpe, and growing two or three yardes from the ground, bearing a flower of the breadth of our bell-flowers in England. The salvages here dry the leaves of this apooke' over the fier and sometymes in the sun, and crumble yt into poulder, stocks, leves and all, taking the same in pipes of earth which very ingeniously they can make."

Nicotiana rustica seems to have been planted and smoked by almost all the North-American Indians east of the River Mississippi, and by many to the westward as well, and it apparently originated in Mexico. It is this species of Nicotiana which certain writers contend was known in Europe before the discovery of the New World, but, as has already been shown, there is no satisfactory evidence to prove this. It reached the Old World, however, early in the

1 Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1849, pp. 121-2.

2 American Anthropologist, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, Oct.-Dec., 1921: Aboriginal Tobacco," by W. A. Setchell.

sixteenth century, and it is still planted by the peasants of Central Europe, and furnished the Syrian "tombac." Nicotiana tabacum supplies the bulk of the tobacco in the trade of all civilized nations. It is a native of the West Indies, of the greater part of Mexico, Central America, the United States of Colombia, the Guianas, Venezuela and Brazil. Among the aborigines of the latter country it was known as "petun," and it probably originated in the interior of Brazil, or on the eastern slopes of the Andes, though it is not now found in a wild state in any of the countries in which it is cultivated. North of Mexico it was unknown before it was introduced there by the Europeans.

Nicotiana tabacum1 possesses a pink flower, and is the only species belonging to its section of the genus. It has all the earmarks of an old and widely cultivated plant.

Nicotiana rustica has a yellow flower, and is a much hardier species than the Nicotiana tabacum. In pre-linnean herbals it was designated as the lesser or female tobacco, and the Nicotiana tabacum as the male.

Nicotiana tabacum attains a height of six feet and upwards, while Nicotiana rustica is a much smaller plant.

Since none of the other varieties of Nicotiana are

1 American Anthropologist, Vol. XXII.

widely used, they have no immediate interest except for the botanist, and thus do not fall within the scope of the present work.

The custom of inhaling smoke in some form or other is of great antiquity, and the use of narcotics is also almost universal in the human race. Herodotus describes how the Scythians used hemp-seed for smoking.1

Pliny and Dioscorides and other ancient writers also refer to the custom of inhaling various fumes for medicinal purposes. In England and mediæval Europe this method of treatment, particularly for bronchitis, was frequently used, coltsfoot being the herb most generally employed. It is clear, however, that the custom of taking smoke in this way was purely medicinal, in view of the surprise which the habit of smoking for pleasure aroused among the first European observers. In fact, the ancient and medieval use of smoke was purely inhalation, nothing resembling a pipe being employed.

Columbus gives what is probably the first reference of a European to tobacco in his Journal for Monday, October 15th, 1492. Again, on Tuesday, November 6th, there is another mention of what is obviously tobacco and the method of taking it used by the natives. Then there follows a passage expanded in

2

1 Herodotus, Bk. IV, ch. 75.

Quarterly Review, No. 436, July, 1913: of Tobacco," by Charles Singer, p. 126.

"The Early History