Incredible as it seems, the investigations of the Swiss botanist, De Candolle (see his delightful History of Cultivated Plants--a wonderful volume, published for 5s., in the International Scientific Series) and of Colonel Prain, formerly in India, now Director of Kew, have rendered it quite certain that the Orientals owe tobacco and the habit of smoking entirely to the Europeans, who brought it from America, as early as 1558. In the year 1560 Jean Nicot, the French Ambassador, saw the plant in Portugal, and sent seeds to France to Catherine de’ Medici. It was named Nicotiana in his honour. But the introduction into Europe of the practice of smoking is chiefly due to the English. In 1586 Ralph Lane, the first Governor of Virginia, and Sir Francis Drake brought over the pipes of the North American Indians and the tobacco prepared by them. The English enthusiasm for tobacco smoking, “drinking a pipe of tobacco,” as it was at first called, was extraordinary both for its sudden development, its somewhat excessive character, and the violent antagonism which it aroused, and, as we learn from Mr. Frederic Harrison, still arouses. It was at once called “divine tobacco” by the poet Spenser, and “our holy herb nicotian” by William Lilly, and not long afterwards denounced as a devilish poison by King James. The reason why the English had most to do with the introduction of smoking is that the inhabitants of South America did not smoke pipes, but chewed the tobacco, or took it as snuff, and less frequently smoked it as a cigar. From the Isthmus of Panama as far as Canada and California, on the other hand, the custom of smoking pipes was universal, and wonderful carved pipes of great variety were found in use by the natives of these regions, and also dug up in very ancient burial grounds. Hence the English colonists of Virginia were the first to introduce pipe-smoking to Europe. The Portuguese had discovered the coasts of Brazil as early as 1500, and it is they who carried tobacco to their possessions and trading ports in the Far East--to India, Java, China, and Japan, so that in less than a hundred years it was well established in those countries. Probably it went about the same time from Spain and England to Turkey, and from there to Persia, and rapidly developed not only special new forms of pipe (the hookah) for its consumption, but also within a few years special varieties of the plant itself. These were raised by cultivation, and have formerly been erroneously regarded as native Asiatic species of tobacco plant.