Tobacco : Its history, varieties, culture, manufacture and commerce, with an account of its various modes of use, from its first discovery until now / [E R Billings].
- Billings, E. R.
- Date:
- 1875
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Tobacco : Its history, varieties, culture, manufacture and commerce, with an account of its various modes of use, from its first discovery until now / [E R Billings]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
37/504 page 31
![suppose) is a cup of sack, they think it be no bad physick.” Dr. William BiU'clay in his work on Tobacco, (1614) declares “ that it worketh wonderous cures.” He not only defends the herb but the “land where it groweth.” At this time the tobacco plant like Indian Corn was very small, possessing but few of the qualities now required to make it merchantable. When first exported to Spain and Portugal from the West Indies and South America, and even by the English from Virginia, the leaf was dark in color and strong and rank in flavor. This, however, seems to have been the standard in regard to some varieties while others are spoken of by some of the early writers upon tobacco as “ sweet.” The tobacco (u]!)powoc) grown b}'^ the Indians in America, at the time of its discovery, and more particularly in North America, would compare better with the suckers of the largest varieties of the plant rather than with even the small- est species of the plant now cultivated. At the present time tobacco culture is considered a science in order to secure the colors in demand, and that are fashionable, and also the right texture of leaf now so desii'able in all tobaccos designed for wrappers. Could the Indians, who cultivated the plant on the banks of the James, the Amazon and other rivers of America, now look upon the plant growing in rare luxuriance upon the same fields where they first raised it, they could hardly realize them to be the same varieties that they had previously planted.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28047801_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
