English Tobacco Planting.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 163, 31 July 1886, Page 5

English Tobacco Planting.

There is to be a new crop grown on English soil, and travellers crossing the country by rail will be puzzled to see strange plantations with which they are much more familiar than they suppose. The Lords of the Treasury are going to allow an experimental cultivation of tobacco, but the necessary permission is not to be had for asking. If a farmer plants an acre of ground he must enter into a bond of £100 to eecure his undertaking that all the leaves shall ultimately pass through the hands of the revenue officials, ,who will weigh them and determine the duty to be paid. Good judges maintain that the experiment will be a certain success. The soil of England, and more especially the soil of Ireland, they say, is admirably adapted for the growth of the commoner kinds of tobacco. The crop will be large and reliable though the quality may be coarse. In the meantime the social question will be largely influenced. England is one of the few countries in which you can get a good cigar at a not unreasonable price. The number of very cheap cigars sold in this country is almost inconsiderable, because they have a double tax to pay. The ex porting country taxes them, and our Revenue taxes them also. So trade is scarcely possible. The poor smoke pipes, and on the whole don't lose by the necessity. In Germany the churchwarden is unknown. You do occasionally see a pipe of a highly complex and cumbrous character that looks more like some wind instrument but cigars are the p meral rule. Cabmen, porters, soldiers, railway guards, all smoke cigars in Germany, and it is the same in Italy. The reason is that the tobacco in that form is as cheap as in any other form, and much more convenient. You get a " Minghetto " cigar all over Italy for a penny, and a "Trabuco" for three half pence and three cigarettes for less than a penny. If the new experiment succeeds it will be attended with the disappearance of the pipe, and possibly also with a rarity of fairly good imported cigars, and a rise in price of the best. The poor man will be the gainer, and the loss will fall on the consumer of the sixpenny cigar. — English Paper.