These are the cash prices of one wholesale warehouse in Thames-street; an immediately adjoining warehouse charges fully 1s. more upon the standard CI, and proportionally upon the others.
TITANIUM, is a rare metal, discovered by Klaproth, in menachanite, in 1794. It has been detected since in the form of small cubes of a copper-red colour, in some of the blast furnaces in Yorkshire. According to Hassenfratz, its presence in small quantity does not impair the malleability of iron. It is very brittle, so hard as to scratch steel, and very light, having a specific gravity of only 5·3. It will not melt in the heat of any furnace, nor dissolve, when crystallized, even in nitro-muriatic acid; but only when in fine powder. By calcination with nitre, it becomes oxygenated, and forms titanate of potassa. Traces of this metal may be detected in many irons, both wrought and cast. The principal ores of titanium are sphene, common and foliated, rutile, iserine, menachanite, and octahedrite or pyramidal titanium ore. None of them has been hitherto applied to any use.
TOBACCO. It is said that the name tobacco was given by the Spaniards to the plant, because it was first observed by them at Tabasco, or Tabaco, a province of Yucatan in Mexico. In 1560, Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal, having received some tobacco from a Flemish merchant, showed it, on his arrival in Lisbon, to the grand prior, and, on his return into France, to Catherine of Medicis, whence it has been called Nicotiana by the botanists. Admiral Sir Francis Drake having, on his way home from the Spanish Main, in 1586, touched at Virginia, and brought away some forlorn colonists, is reported to have first imported tobacco into England. But, according to Lobel, this plant was cultivated in Britain before the year 1570; and was consumed by smoking in pipes by Sir Walter Raleigh, and companions, so early as the year 1584.
The plants are hung up to dry during four or five weeks; taken down out of the sheds in damp weather, for in dry they would be apt to crumble into pieces; stratified in heaps, covered up, and left to sweat for a week or two, according to their quality and the state of the season; during which time they must be examined frequently, opened up, and turned over, lest they become too hot, take fire, or run into putrefactive fermentation. This process needs to be conducted by skilful and attentive operatives. An experienced negro can form a sufficiently accurate judgment of the temperature, by thrusting his hand down into the heap.
The tobacco thus prepared, or often without fermentation, is sent into the market; but, before being sold, it must undergo the inspection of officers, appointed by the state with very liberal salaries, who determine its quality, and brand an appropriate stamp upon its casks, if it be sound; but if it be bad, it is burned.
Our respectable tobacconists are very careful to separate all the damaged leaves, before they proceed to their preparation, which they do by spreading them in a heap upon a stone pavement, watering each layer in succession, with a solution of sea salt, of spec. grav. 1·107, called sauce, till a ton or more be laid; and leaving their principles to react on each other for three or four days, according to the temperature, and the nature of the tobacco. It is highly probable that ammonia is the volatilizing agent of many odours, and especially of those of tobacco and musk. If a fresh green leaf of tobacco be crushed between the fingers, it emits merely the herbaceous smell common to many plants; but if it be triturated in a mortar, along with a little quicklime or caustic potash, it will immediately exhale the peculiar odour of snuff. Now analysis shows the presence of muriate of ammonia in this plant, and fermentation serves further to generate free ammonia in it; whence, by means of this process, and lime, the odoriferous vehicle is abundantly developed. If, on the other hand, the excess of alkaline matter in the tobacco of the shops be saturated by a mild dry acid, as the tartaric, its peculiar aroma will entirely disappear.
Tobacco contains a great quantity of an azotized principle, which by fermentation produces abundance of ammonia; the first portions of which saturate the acid juices of the plant, and the rest serve to volatilize its odorous principles. The salt water is useful chiefly in moderating the fermentation, and preventing it from passing into the putrefactive stage; just as salt is sometimes added to saccharine worts in tropical countries, to temper the fermentative action. The sea salt, or concentrated sea water, which contains some muriate of lime, tends to keep the tobacco moist, and is therefore preferable to pure chloride of sodium for this purpose. Some tobacconists mix molasses with the salt sauce, and ascribe to this addition the violet colour of the macouba snuff of Martinique; and others add a solution of extract of liquorice. The following prescription is that used by a skilful manufacturer:—In a solution of the liquorice juice, a few figs are to be boiled for a couple of hours; to the decoction, while hot, a few bruised anise-seeds are to be added, and when cold, common salt to saturation. A little silent spirit of wine being poured in, the mixture is to be equably, but sparingly, sprinkled with the rose of a watering-pot, over the leaves of the tobacco, as they are successively stratified upon the preparation floor.
The fermented leaves, being next stripped of their middle ribs by the hands of children, are sorted anew, and the large ones are set apart for making cigars. Most of the tobaccos on sale in our shops are mixtures of different growths: one kind of smoking tobacco, for example, consists of 70 parts of Maryland, and 30 of meagre Virginia; and one kind of snuff consists of 80 parts of Virginia, and 30 parts of either Humesfort or Warwick. The Maryland is a very light tobacco, in thin yellow leaves; that of Virginia is in large brown leaves, unctuous or somewhat gluey on the surface, having a smell somewhat like the figs of Malaga; that of Havannah is in brownish, light leaves, of an agreeable and rather spicy smell; it forms the best cigars. The Carolina tobacco is less unctuous than the Virginian; but in the United States it ranks next to the Maryland.
The shag tobacco is dried to the proper point upon sheets of copper.