Tobacco is an annual plant, attaining a height of six feet, having dingy red, funnel-shaped flowers, and viscid leaves.  The leaves are the officinal part, and their active properties depend on a peculiar, oily-like alkaloid, called Nicotin.  The flavor and strength of tobacco depend on climate, cultivation, and the mode of manufacture.  That most esteemed by the smoker is Havanna tobacco, but the Virginian is the strongest.  The small Havanna cigars are prepared from the leaves of Nicotium repanda, Syrian and Turkish tobacco from N. rustica, and fine Shiraz tobacco from N. persica.  With the exception of the Macuba tobacco, which is cultivated in Martinique in a peculiar soil, the tobacco of Cuba is considered the finest in the world.  That grown in the island of Trinidad is, however, fully equal to it in quality, but all raised in the colony is generally consumed there, and is little known in the English market.  This ought not to be the case, for no article would pay better.

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 very like the figs of Malaga; that of Havanna is in brownish light leaves, of an agreeable and rather spicy smell,—­it forms, as I have already stated, 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, and is cut up by knife-edged chopping stamps.  There are said to be four kinds of tobacco reared in Virginia, viz., the sweet-scented, which is considered the best; the big and little, which follows next; then the Frederick; and, lastly, the one and all, the largest kind, and producing most in point of quantity.

According to Loudon ("Encyclo. of Plants"), there are fourteen species of this genus, besides a few varieties.  Lindley, however, enumerates 31, but many of these are mere showy species, adapted to flower gardens.  I shall therefore follow chiefly London’s classification—­

1. N.  Tabacum, a native of several parts of America, but principally known as Virginian tobacco, having a stem rising from four to six feet or more in height, bearing pink flowers.  Of this there are three chief varieties known in America by the popular names of Orinoco, Broad-leaved and Narrow-leaved.  Lindley enumerates eight varieties of N.  Tabacum.

    2. N. macrophylla, or large-leaved tobacco, an ornamental annual,
    also with pink flowers, native of America, which rises to the height
    of six feet.

    3. N. fruticosa, or shrubby tobacco, an ornamental evergreen
    shrub, native of China, with pink blossoms, which grows to about
    three feet.

    4. N. undulata, or suaveolens, sweet-scented or New Holland
    tobacco, a green house perennial, native of New South Wales, with
    white flowers, which is only two feet high.