It is noteworthy that even tobacco-leaves, the avowed destroyers of insect life, should themselves be the prey of some form of the ubiquitous microbe. Besides the mite just mentioned that speckles the outer leaf of old cigars, a more ravenous one has been discovered working its will on Indian cigar-leaf. In a recent issue of Indian Museum Notes, Mr. Cote gives an interesting account of the works and ways of an insect that drills tiny round holes in tobacco-leaves, so small indeed that they had escaped observation until the havoc wrought awakened alarm. The pest tunnels its way through the leaf, irrespective of strength or flavour, even the Trichinopoli is not beyond its taste. And it multiplies so rapidly that much valuable leaf is soon rendered worthless for smoking. Its method of working has suggested the name of weevil. The Indian tobacco industry, therefore, has now to reckon with a new and unscrupulous competitor in the form of the ‘cigar weevil.’ It would be a boon to long-suffering humanity and a triumph for the bacteriologist if he could manage to set one tribe against another of these evil-doers, to their mutual destruction. If they are like living things in the natural world they will have their foes and their struggles for existence. The old lady’s belief that microbes have pink eyes and ravenous teeth may not be perfectly accurate, yet judging from their insidious attacks on unsuspecting mortals we are warranted in assuming that they have other very effective means of combat. The spectacle of internecine warfare going on in their little world, as revealed under the microscope, would afford from its novelty an exhibition worth going miles to see.
The tobacco-plant is not now cultivated in England. James the First thought it shameful that so pernicious a plant should be permitted to take root in our rich and fruitful soil, and caused an edict to be issued prohibiting its cultivation within the British Islands. The King’s apologists find reason for the prohibition in his Majesty’s concern for the interests of the young colony of tobacco planters settled in Virginia. Be this as it may, Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) on economic grounds condemns the enactment, saying, ‘Home cultivation of tobacco has on this account most absurdly been prohibited through the greater part of Europe which necessarily gives a monopoly to the countries where its cultivation is allowed.’
To the impoverished treasury of Charles the Second its importation was made to yield revenue at a rate equivalent to about thirty shillings a pound weight of our present money, and through the agency of his ministers enacted in ‘Laws and Regulations concerning Tobacco’ (15 Car. II. c. 7. 12. Par. II. c. 34.) that, ‘Tobacco is not to be planted in England on a forfeiture of 40s. for every rood of ground thus planted.’ This restriction however was ‘not to extend to the planting of tobacco in Physic Gardens, in quantities not exceeding half a pole, and also, on forfeiture of £10 for every rood of ground.’ These prohibitory measures remained in force until April 1886, when English farming being in in extremis the Government granted permission to grow the plant in the United Kingdom, under certain precautions and restrictions for the purpose of safe-guarding the revenue. Several land-owners in Kent, Norfolk and Essex, tried their prentice hand in the new husbandry, notably, Messrs. James Carter & Company of Bromley, whose first crop seemed to give fair promise of future success. Their sanguine expectations however were short-lived. What with hampering restrictions on the one hand and our fickle climate on the other, it soon became too apparent that English agriculturists must not look to the Indian weed for the much needed succour. The crops raised proved to be unmarketable. The cultivation of the tobacco-plant in these islands is no longer authorized.
The Home manufacture of cigars from foreign leaf however increased by leaps and bounds, and now affords remunerative employment for many thousands of work-people in London alone. There are also large tobacco factories in the chief seats of industry and commerce throughout the kingdom. This is due in great measure to the heavy tax levied upon foreign made cigars imported into this country, namely, six shillings on every pound weight—i.e., double the sum charged on tobacco in the leaf. This great difference would seem to afford the unscrupulous an incentive to fabricate spurious high-priced cigars under foreign names. Looked at in this light it may be a question worth the consideration of the Board of Customs whether or not it would be well to lessen the difference between the two rates of duty—to raise the one and lower the other—with advantage to both the consumer and the revenue.
Our gossip about the Indian weed may now be brought to a close with a few words about its co-partner, the pipe. For even tobacco-pipes, like all other products of men’s ingenuity, awaken interest all the more engrossing when little else remains to tell the story of those who made them and used them. They carry the imagination back to those shadowy palaces of the Incas and Aztecs, where equally shadowy potentates smoked out of pipes made of precious metals, or of highly polished and richly-gilt wood. Pipes indeed, present features highly interesting to a much larger class than to professed ethnologists. The wide region over which they are found, buried in mounds and tumuli extending from the north-west coast of America to the plains of Patagonia, tell us how universal was the habit of smoking on that vast continent; while similarity of structure suggests a common origin. Curious specimens have been found in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, and in the great Mississippi valley, varying from the simplest forms made out of baked clay with a plain cylinder or urn, to others of a class, very uniform in type, cut out of porphyry in a single piece. These latter have a slightly convey base measuring about four inches in length, and one inch broad, with the bowl on the centre. A fine hole pierces the pipe from end to end of the base to the bottom of the bowl, the opposite end being obviously designed for the smoker to hold in the hand. Others are remarkable for a fine display of artistic skill in the carving of birds, mammals, reptiles and human heads, often fanciful and grotesque, but always vigorously expressed. In Mexico elaborately moulded and ornamented pipes have been found, along with others of a type almost identical with our common clay pipe. And in British Columbia pipes are occasionally met with in the possession of the native Indians, moulded and carved by themselves in almost every variety of fantastic form, and with tracery that would do no discredit to modern art. These are for the most part made of blue slate-clay, and have intricate pierced work carried through the tube. In old Indian grave-mounds Messrs. Squier & Davis, in the course of their explorations in 1846-7, found pipes cut into the form of human heads, the features on which were singularly truthful and expressive; and what was still more remarkable was their strikingly Mongolian type, a circumstance which lends support to the hypothesis that in the remote past the American continent was peopled from the eastern part of Asia. Some of the pipes found in these mounds represented animals peculiar to the lower latitudes. On one pipe the otter is shown in the attitude of holding a fish in its mouth: on another the heron has seized a fish; the hawk is grasping a small bird, and with its beak is in the act of tearing it to pieces. Almost every bird and animal common to the country is found boldly carved on the pipes of the aborigines of America.
The material for pipes mostly sought after by the natives is the beautiful and easily wrought red sandstone of the Coteau des Prairies. The calumet, which plays an important part in their civil and religious observances, is made from this source, chiefly on account of the legend respecting its origin and the origin of smoking, mentioned in the first chapter. One can hardly help seeing in the handiwork shown in the make of these curious smoking instruments points of contact with the social condition and intelligence of the makers. From the short nostril tube of the Caribs to the feathered peace-pipe of the continental tribes is an advancement in the social scale, such as we see in the difference between the hole in the ground for a bowl made by natives of central India, who use a leaf for a tube, and the richly adorned chibouk of the Turk. This view affords us a glimpse of primitive man struggling to adapt his surroundings to his needs, according to the degree of intelligence to which he has attained.
The ordinary pipe so extensively used in England is made from white clay, found chiefly at Purbeck, in Dorsetshire, and Newton Abbot, in Devonshire. But, in recent years, the heath briar-root of France for pipes has come largely into use. Perhaps no material for pipe bowls stands in higher favour than meerschaum—a fine, white clay consisting chiefly of magnesia, silica and water. The best kinds are found in pits in the Crimea and along the peninsula of Heracleati in Asia Minor. It is soft and porous: the finest specimens are almost transparent. When first taken out of the pits it makes lather like soap-suds. The workmen employed in digging it up say that if left for long lying about it forms itself into froth. Thus the foam of the sea of past ages, driven by the winds into sheltered cavities and hollow places of the earth, comes at last to render service to St Nicotine; and in our meditative moods is brought vividly before the mind the fabled birth of the goddess of love, laughter and beauty. According to the old Greek myth it was just off the coast of Paphos (Cyprus) that Aphrodite arose from amid sea-foam that covered the mutilated body of old, sleepy, Uranus, who in a drowsy moment had rolled down the cliff into the sea. Springing thus into being she was seen by the three daughters of Zeus (the seasons) who carried her to Olympus, and all the gods admired her for her beauty. There are connoisseurs who fancy that the meerschaum pipes coming from this region impart to the tobacco a peculiarly delicate flavour. Constantinople is the great mart for the sale of meerschaum, as Vienna is for its manufacture into pipes. The material is so extremely difficult to manipulate that the uncertainty attending its successful manufacture gives a high value to the better kinds. The meerschaum is soaked in water for twenty-four hours and then turned in a lathe. In this process the clay often proves to be too porous, and is on this account rejected: this will happen as many as seven times out of ten.
FOOTNOTES
[1] On the title-page is a picture of a bi-forked hill with a tall Virginian tobacco plant growing in the cleft. A scroll bears the motto, Digna Parnasso et Apolline. There is an excellent copy of the work in the long-room of the British Museum.