he most thorough culture in order to
secure the finest form and quality of leaf. It is a native of the
tropics and under the intense rays of a vertical sun develops its
finest and most remarkable flavor which far surpasses the varieties
grown in a temperate region. It however readily adapts itself to soil
and climate growing through a wide range of temperature from the
Equator to Moscow in Russia in latitude 56 deg., and through all the
intervening range of climate[2].

[Footnote 1: The greater number of the species are
annual plants; but two at least are perennial; the
_Nicotiana fruticosa_, which is a shrub, a native of the
Cape of Good Hope, and of China; and _N. urens_, a
native of South America.]

[Footnote 2: Tatham says that the tobacco plant is
peculiarly adapted for an agricultural comparison of
climates.]

The plant varies in height according to species and locality; the
largest varieties reaching an altitude of ten or twelve feet, in
others not growing more than two or three feet from the ground.
Botanists have enumerated between forty and fifty varieties of the
tobacco plant who class them all among the narcotic poisons. When
properly cultivated the plant ripens in a few weeks growing with a
rapidity hardly equaled by any product either temperate or tropical.
Of the large number of varieties cultivated scarcely more than
one-half are grown to any great extent while many of them are hardly
known outside of the limit of cultivation. Tobacco is a strong growing
plant resisting heat and drought to a far greater extent than most
plants. It is a native of America, the discovery of the continent and
the plant occurring almost simultaneously. It succeeds best in a deep
rich loam in a climate ranging from forty to fifty degrees of
latitude. After having been introduced and cultivated in nearly all
parts of the world, America enjoys the reputation of growing the
finest varieties known to commerce. European tobacco is lacking in
flavor and is less powerful than the tobacco of America.

The botanical account of tobacco is as follows:--

"Nicotiana, the tobacco plant is a genus of plants of the
order of Monogynia, belonging to the pentandria class, order
1, of class V. It bears a tubular 5-cleft calyx; a
funnel-formed corolla, with a plaited 5-cleft border; the
stamina inclined;