Fiji.—The Fiji Islands are well adapted to tobacco culture. The natives produce a good deal, which nearly approaches the American leaf. With careful curing, it would find a market in England. The native product is rolled, which prevents its being made into cigars. Samples of leaf-tobacco in hands, raised from foreign seeds, exhibited very unequal qualities, and a tendency to revert to American forms, the Havana returning to the Virginian type. Cut up for smoking, they were deficient in flavour, but were considered satisfactory as a first experiment.

France.—The area occupied by tobacco in France in 1873 was 14,858 hectares (of 2½ acres), yielding at the rate of 12 quintals (of 220½ lb.). The amount of land authorized, to grow tobacco in Pas de Calais in 1879 was 2100 acres, and the quantity furnished to the Government was 3,659,636 lb., the prices (per kilo.) paid by the Government being 1 fr. 45c. for 1sts, 1 fr. 12c. for 2nds, 88c. for 3rds, and 10–66c. for other inferior qualities. The number of plants grown per acre is about 17,000. The department Nord affords rather more than Pas de Calais.

By the Imperial decrees of December 29th, 1810, and January 12th, 1811, it was ordained that the purchase of tobacco in leaf and the fabrication and sale, whether wholesale or retail, of manufactures of tobacco, should be exclusively confined to the Administration of Indirect Taxes (Régie des Droits Unis) in all the departments of France. At present the Régie has in operation 16 large manufactories, 27 “magasins de culture,” and 4 “magasins de transit.” It employs over 19,000 workpeople, of whom about 80 per cent. are women and girls. The usual daily earnings are, for men, from 2s. 7d. to 3s. 11d., and for women, from 1s. 2d. to 2s. 4d. For faithful or exemplary services, the workpeople receive annually rewards, varying in amounts from 15s. to 20l. Mr. Scidmore, the United States Consular Agent in Paris, gives the following description of the manner in which the operations of the Régie are carried on. At the beginning of each year the Minister of Finance designates the number of hectares upon which, and the departments within which, the cultivation of tobacco may be undertaken during the following season. The last ministerial decree upon this subject confines the privilege to the departments of the Alpes Maritimes, Bouches du Rhône, Dordogne, Gironde, Ille-et-Vilaine, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nord, Pas de Calais, Puy de Dôme, Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Saöne, Savoie, Haute Savoie, and Var. In the month of October or November, an agent of the Régie proceeds to the communes among which the prefects have apportioned the allotments, and receives the declaration of every proprietor desiring to profit by the authorization. A Commission, composed of the prefect, of the director of indirect taxes, a superior agent of cultivation, a member of the council general, and of a member of the council of the arrondissement, not being planters, then examine the declarations, and admit, reduce, or reject them. After a planter is accorded permission to cultivate, he is subjected to close official supervision, and to numerous stringent regulations concerning details as to the prohibition to sow any other seed than that furnished to him by the administration, the mode of planting, &c.; and, in addition to the surveillance as to these matters, two official inventories are taken of the growing crop—the first to ascertain the extent of land under cultivation and the number of plants, the second to determine the number of leaves for which the planter will be held accountable. When the tobacco has been gathered in a manner described by regulations of minute detail, the planter takes it to the magazine of the Régie, where it is subjected to the inspection of a commission of five disinterested experts, who separate the leaves into three portions, according to quality; the planter is then paid for each portion in accordance with the tariff of prices promulgated by the Minister of Finance. Foreign tobacco is obtained through contract with private parties, after published proposals by the Minister of Finance through the French Consular Corps abroad, and through a special government agency established at Havana. At present a little over one-third of the tobacco purchased by the Régie is of French growth; over one-half consists of foreign leaf, mostly obtained from the United States, and the remainder is made up by importations of cigars from Havana and Manilla, and by cigarettes and miscellaneous productions of various countries, and by custom-house seizures. The magazines distributed throughout the country are of two sorts, “magasins de transit” for foreign tobacco, and “magasins de culture” for indigenous tobacco. In the “magasins de transit” the foreign leaves have not to submit to any other manipulation than the sampling of packages, after which they are forwarded to the factories in such quantities as may be demanded. With the indigenous tobacco the course is different; this when received from the hands of the French grower is usually very imperfectly dried, and has to be subjected to a curing process. After the bundles are thoroughly thrashed, they are put in heaps according to maturity, and fermented in a temperature as high as 30° to 40° Centigrade. This maturation lasts from six to nine months, depending upon the locality, and the condition of the leaves as received, and is interrupted from time to time by the operation of shaking and turning in order to prevent too great fermentation. When this fermentation is concluded, those leaves containing less than twenty per cent. of water are ready to be packed. At this point certain of the leaves undergo a stemming process; they are then packed by hydraulic pressure in bales and hogsheads weighing from 400 to 500 kilo. each, and in this state they remain stored in the magazine for some months to acquire further ripeness. It is usually 15–18 months after they are gathered that the leaves are considered to be in a fit condition to be sent to the manufactory. Upon arrival at the manufactory, the packages are sorted and emptied; the leaves are spread out in large bins or receive a preparatory wetting with water containing 10 per cent. of sea salt, in order to produce flexibility and prevent powdering. This process occupies 24 hours. Then follows the sorting according to quality, and the distribution to the various workrooms for composition.

When intended for the manufacture of snuff, the leaves are put into machines and chopped into strips of the width of a finger; they are then moistened with pure water or tobacco juice of various strengths, the necessary quantity and quality of which is determined by chemical analysis. These strips are then piled up in masses containing from 35,000 to 40,000 kilogrammes, in rooms where a high and even temperature is maintained by steam-pipes and ventilators. Here they remain to ferment during a month or six weeks, when they are dried, ground into powder, and sifted. This powder then receives a wetting, is packed in stout wooden bins, in quantities ranging from 25,000 to 30,000 kilo., and so remain to ferment for several months. During the course of the final fermentation, the powder is tested and moved from one bin to another from time to time, in order to ensure a successful issue of the process. When the samples taken from the bins indicate maturity, the snuff is packed in barrels and casks, and is ready for the market. For the manufacture of smoking-tobacco, the leaves, after the stemming process, receive their first moistening, which lasts 24 hours. They are then neatly arranged, with their edges parallel, and are taken to the chopping machines; the machines in use at the Régie are capable of chopping 220 lb. per hour, the knives being renewed twice during that time. The tobacco, on leaving the choppers, contains about 25 per cent. of humidity, and is immediately conveyed into one end of a revolving drying cylinder, heated to a uniform temperature of 203° Fahrenheit, from the opposite end of which it issues, at the expiration of fifteen minutes, in a dried state and freed from albumen. It is then put through a second cylinder, similar in construction to the last, but which subjects the tobacco to a strong draught of cold air to eliminate all dust and heat. The tobacco is then packed in well-aired bins, where it remains from four to six weeks, after which it is carefully overhauled by hand to remove the pieces of stems and foreign matter that may have escaped notice in the previous operations. It is then put up in packages, varying in weight from 40 grammes upwards. These packages are surrounded with a paper band, upon which are printed the Government tax stamp, the date of manufacture, the weight, the price, and the letter “H,” followed by figures. The last mark signifies the amount of humidity contained in the tobacco at the time it was put into the packets. Consul Scidmore says that in no instance since its inauguration has there been a year without enormous profits to the tobacco monopoly in France, and in a table appended to his report, it appears that from the date of its foundation (1811) to the end of 1878, the net total gain to the French Government amounted to 287,703,881l.

The following table from a recent report shows that the consumption of tobacco in France has been steadily increasing:—

Year.Population.Amount consumed.Amount per Head.
Kilogrammes.Grammes.
181529,250,0008,981,403307
182631,673,85311,595,084366
183132,731,25611,071,088338
184134,018,71516,461,934484
185135,546,91919,718,089555
186437,133,42428,019,803755
186637,807,20330,627,663810
187235,844,41427,031,000754
187636,643,08731,188,846851

The amount consumed in the different departments varies very much. Snuff-taking is most practised in Oise, Seine Inférieure, Eure, and Eure-et-Loir, at the maximum rate of 375 grm. per head; and least in the departments of Doubs, Pyrénées Orientales, Nord, Haut Rhin, and Haute Savoie, where the average is but 100 grm. In smoking, however, there is rather a reverse order of things, the Nord, Haut-Rhin, and Pas de Calais consuming at the rate of 2 kilo. per head, while the minimum is found in Haute Savoie, Cantal, Corrèze, Creuse, Aveyron, Dordogne, Lot, and Lozère. Ten departments only consume tobacco above the average, while 70 are actually below it. If all France smoked the same quantity as do the people of Nord, Haut-Rhin, and Pas de Calais, the consumption for the whole country would be 73,286,174 kilo. instead of 31,000,000; and vice versâ it would be only 6,265,968 kilo. if calculated according to the average of Lozère, which is only at the rate of 171 grm. per head.

The department of the Nord, in 1884, had 449 hectares (of 2·47 acres) under tobacco, the yield of which was 1,168,206 kilo.

Germany.—The total area of land engaged in growing tobacco in Germany in 1878 was about 44,520 acres; nearly two-thirds of this total was distributed among Rhenish Bavaria, Baden, S. Hesse, and Alsace-Lorraine. The total consumption of tobacco in the German empire in that year was 2,196,000 cwt. The home production was 596,776 cwt., the remainder being imported.

The aggregate area of land cultivated with tobacco in the States of the German Customs Union did not vary considerably during ten years, being 21,509 hectares in 1863, and 20,918 in 1872, to which must be added the newly annexed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which bring up the total to 24,745 hectares. It appears that, with particular regard to the year 1872, the cultivation was carried on in 4067 different localities, by 94,916 taxable growers, and by 83,675 smaller growers, whose production, owing to its limited extent, was exempt from taxation. By far the larger number were small growers, the area cultivated by each not exceeding an average of 10 ares. In Prussia the aggregate of land cultivated during the year 1871 amounted to 5925 hectares, or 26 per cent. of the entire territory of the kingdom; the aggregate yield of the harvest in the same year was 198,890 centners. It appears that the extent of tobacco-growing land has, during the last fifty years, been gradually diminishing in Prussia, and that accordingly the expectations entertained in the beginning of that period of a great future development of this branch of agriculture have not been realized. The reasons for the gradual decline are considered to be, on the one hand, the growing competition of the South German growers, and the increase in the importations of American tobacco; on the other hand, the fact that the cultivation of beetroot for sugar, and of potatoes for distilling purposes, has proved to be a more profitable business than tobacco production. It has, moreover, been found by many years’ experience, that whilst the quality of the tobacco cultivated in most parts of Prussia is not such as to enable the growers to compete successfully with the importers of foreign, particularly North American sorts, the labour attending its cultivation and its preparation for the market, as well as the uncertainty of only an average crop, are out of proportion, as a rule, to the average profits arising therefrom. The cultivation of the plant has consequently gradually “become restricted chiefly to those districts of the country where either the soil is peculiarly adapted for the purpose, or where it is carried on for the private use of the producer.