It is said, some spent as much as £500 a year in the purchase of tobacco in those days. In 1624 Pope Urban VIII published a decree of excommunication against all who took snuff in the church. Ten years after this, smoking was forbidden in Russia under pain of having the nose cut off; and in 1653 the Council of the Canton of Appenzell cited smokers before them, whom they punished, ordering all innkeepers to inform against such as were found smoking in their houses. The police regulations made in Berne in 1661 were divided according to the Ten Commandments, in which the prohibition of smoking stands after the command against adultery. This prohibition was renewed in 1675, and the tribunal instituted to put it into execution--viz., Chambreau Tabac--continued to the middle of the eighteenth century. Pope Innocent XII, in 1690, excommunicated all those who were found taking snuff or tobacco in the Church of St. Peter at Rome; and even so late as 1719 the Senate of Strasburg prohibited the cultivation of tobacco, from an apprehension that it would diminish the growth of corn. Amurath IV published an edict which made smoking tobacco a capital offence; but, notwithstanding all opposition, its fascinating power has held its own. It is believed that the tobacco plant _Nicotiana Tabacum_ is a native of tropical America, and it was found by the Spaniards when they landed in Cuba in 1492. There seems little doubt that the practice of smoking the leaf has been common among the natives of South America from time immemorial. It is now cultivated all over the world, but nowhere more abundantly or with better results than in the United States. Virginia is perhaps most celebrated for its culture. The young shoots produced from seeds thickly sown in beds, are transplanted into the fields during the month of May, and set in rows, with an interval of three or four feet between the plants. Through the whole period of its growth, the crop requires constant attention till the harvest time, in the month of August. The ripe plants having been cut off above their roots, are dried under cover, and then stripped of their leaves, which are tied in bundles and packed in hogsheads. While hung up in the drying-houses, they undergo a curing process, consisting of exposure to a considerable degree of heat, through which they become moist, after which they are dried for packing. In Persia and Turkey a form of tobacco is sold under the name of Tumbeki for use in the water-pipes or narghileh, which is said to be the product of the _Nicotiana Persica_.