ABSTRACT
TOBACCO, at present the most productive contributory to our revenue from port duties, has been known to us, in England, for more than three centuries.
Into Western Europe it was first introduced in 1560, when Francesco Hernandez imported some plants of tobacco from America into Spain. The plant was termed by the natives petun, and they had, for ages before the discovery of the western continent by Europeans, been accustomed to inhale the smoke of the burning leaves, using for the purpose a roll of the leaves, the prototype of the modern cigar, or a tube or pipe, which they termed tabaco. This name Hernandez and the Spaniards adopted as a name for the plant itself.
