This leads me to refute a widespread and more persistent error, in spite of what I proved in 1855, namely, that of regarding some species ill described from cultivated specimens as natives of the old world, of Asia in particular. The proofs of an American origin are so numerous and consistent that, without entering much into detail, I may sum them up as follows:—
_A._ Out of fifty species of the genus Nicotiana found in a wild state, two only are foreign to America; namely, _N. suavolens_ of New Holland, with which is joined _N. rotundifolia_ of the same country, and that which Ventinat had wrongly styled _N. undulata_; and _N. fragans_, Hooker, of the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia, which differs very little from the preceding.
_B._ Though the Asiatic people are great lovers of tobacco, and have from a very early epoch sought the smoke of certain narcotic plants, none of them made use of tobacco before the discovery of America. Tiedemann has distinctly proved this fact by thorough researches into the writings of travellers in the Middle Ages.[686] He even quotes for a later epoch, not long after the discovery of America, between 1540 and 1603, the fact that several travellers, some of whom were botanists, such as Belon and Rauwolf, who travelled through the Turkish and Persian empires, observing their customs with much attention, have not once mentioned tobacco. It was evidently introduced into Turkey at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Persians soon received it from the Turks. The first European who mentions the smoking of tobacco in Persia is Thomas Herbert, in 1626. No later travellers have omitted to notice the use of the hookah as well established. Olearius describes this apparatus, which he saw in 1633. The first mention of tobacco in India is in 1605,[687] and it is probable that it was of European introduction. It was first introduced at Arracan and Pegu, in 1619, according to the traveller Methold.[688] There are doubts about Java, because Rumphius, a very accurate observer, who wrote in the second half of the seventeenth century, says[689] that, according to the tradition of some old people, tobacco had been employed as a medicine before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1496, and that only the practice of smoking it had been communicated by the Europeans. Rumphius adds, it is true, that the name _tabaco_ or _tambuco_, which is in use in all these places, is of foreign origin. Sir Stamford Raffles,[690] in his numerous historical researches on Java, gives, on the other hand, the year 1601 as the date of the introduction of tobacco into Java. The Portuguese had certainly discovered the coasts of Brazil between 1500 and 1504, but Vasco di Gama and his successors went to Asia round the Cape, or through the Red Sea, so that they could hardly have established frequent or direct communications between America and Java. Nicot had seen the plant in Portugal in 1560, so that the Portuguese probably introduced it into Asia in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Thunberg affirms[691] that the use of tobacco was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese, and according to early travellers quoted by Tiedemann, this was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Lastly, the Chinese have no original and ancient sign for tobacco; their paintings on china in the Dresden collection often present, from the year 1700 and never before that date, details relating to tobacco,[692] and Chinese students are agreed that Chinese works do not mention the plant before the end of the sixteenth century.[693] If it be remembered with what rapidity the use of tobacco has spread wherever it has been introduced, these data about Asia have an incontestable force.