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; the stigma capitate; the capsule 2-celled, and 2 to 4 valved." A more general description of the plant is given by an American writer:-- "The tobacco plant is an annual growing from eighteen inches (dwarf tobacco) to seven or eight feet in height[3]. It bears numerous leaves of a pale green color sessile, ovate lanceolate and pointed in form, which come out alternately from two to three inches apart. The flowers grow in loose panicles at the extremity of the stalks, and the calyx is bell-shaped, and divided at its summit into five pointed segments. The tube of the corolla expands at the top into an oblong cup terminating in a 5-lobed plaited rose-colored border. The pistil consists of an oval germ, a slender style longer than the stamen, and a cleft stigma. The flowers are succeeded by capsules of 2 cells opening at the summit and containing numerous kidney-shaped seeds." [Footnote 3: An old English writer in describing tobacco says:--"When at its just height, it is as tall as an ordinary sized man."]