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M. Koelreuter impregnated a stigma of the nicotiana rustica with the farina of the nicotiana paniculata, and obtained prolific seeds from it. With the plants which sprung from these seeds, he repeated the experiment, impregnating them with the farina of the nicotiana paniculata.
Even in the villa rustica of Boscoreale near Pompeii, which was a working farm-house, we find the bath-rooms complete, provided, that is, with the three essentials of dressing-room, tepid-room, and hot-air room.
A complete story on the origin of the early varieties of tobacco would be a very significant contribution, since very little is known about them. Most writers agree that the tobacco cultivated by the English settlers was not the same Nicotiana rustica grown by the Indians, but Nicotiana tabacum, the type found growing in South America and the West Indies.
Here were courts, baths, porticoes, and terraces, in the villa urbana, or residence of the lord, the villa rustica for the steward and slaves, the gallinarium for hens, the apiarium for bees, the suile for swine, the villa fructuaria, including the buildings for storing corn, wine, oil, and fruits, the horius, or garden, and the park, containing the fish-pond and the vivarium.
The first aqueduct, that of the "Aqua Appia," is the joint work of Appius Claudius Cæcus and C. Plautius Venox, censors in 312 B.C. The first built the channel, the second discovered the springs 1,153 meters northeast of the sixth and seventh milestones of the Via Collatina. They are still to be seen, much reduced in volume, at the bottom of some stone quarries near the farmhouse of La Rustica.
It led us, however, through the principal gate or entrance, to a sort of Villa Rustica, without the limits of the city, which amply recompensed our curiosity. The arcade surrounding a square garden, or courtyard, offers itself first to the observer's notice. Into this open a number of coved rooms, adorned with paintings of figures and arabesques.
In the third book of that invaluable work we shall find all we want to know about the real villa rustica of the time, the working farm-house with its wine-vats and olive-mills, like that recently excavated at Boscoreale near Pompeii. Yet it would be unfair to such men as Cicero and his friends, the wiser and quieter section of the aristocracy, to call their work altogether unproductive.
This was of pleasing taste and was well received in some quarters. Soon tract after tract was cleaned of its native Nicotiana rustica as the settlers turned to the promising new species. For a few years production was slow since English dealers were reluctant to hazard too much on an uncertain commodity.
Saint Augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he found time to write." He composed four hundred and ninety books. Of these only one has descended to us entire, "De Re Rustica," written at the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from antiquity on ancient agriculture.
Driven by these two motives John Rolfe became the first colonist to successfully grow tobacco, the plant that was to wield such a tremendous influence on the history of Virginia. Nicotiana rustica, the native tobacco of North America, was found to be inferior to that grown in the Spanish Colonies.
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