The definite proof of the fact that tobacco was in this way introduced from Western Europe to the Oriental nations is, first, that Asiatics have no word for it excepting a corruption of the original American name tabaco, tobacco, or tambuco: it is certain that it is not mentioned in Chinese writings nor represented in their pottery before the year 1680. In the next place, it appears that careful examination of old herbariums and of the records of early travellers who knew plants well and recorded all they saw, proves that no species of tobacco is a native of Asia. There are fifty species of tobacco, but all are American excepting the Nicotiana suaveolens, which is a native of the Australian continent, and the Nicotiana fragrans, which is a native of the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia. Forty-eight different species of tobacco (that is to say, of the genus Nicotiana) are found in America. Of these Nicotiana tabacum is the only one which has been extensively cultivated. It has been found wild in the State of Ecuador, but was cultivated by the natives both of North and South America before the advent of Europeans. It seems probable that all the tobaccos grown in the Old World for smoking or snuffing are only cultivated varieties--often with very special qualities--of the N. tabacum, with the exception of the Shiraz tobacco plant, which, though called N. persica, is of Brazilian origin, and the N. rustica, of Linnæus, a native of Mexico, which has a yellow flower, and yields a coarse kind of tobacco. This has been cultivated in South America and also in Asia Minor. But tobaccos so different as the Havannah, the Maryland and Virginian, the incomparable Latakia, the Manilla, and the Roumelian or Turkish--all come from culture-varieties of the one great species, Nicotiana tabacum.