Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1878 — About the Size of It. [ARTICLE]

About the Size of It.

The entire mass of tobacco which is annually consumed in smoking, snuffing and in chewing on the earth is 4,000,000,000 pounds—manifestly too high an estimate for from 1,200,000,000 to 1,500,000,000 of inhabitants. Let us take the half as the more probable, and let us suppose the tobacco leaves transformed into roll tobacco, a tobacco serpent is created which, with a diameter of two inches, and following the direction of the equator, could wind itself around the earth thirty times. Let us suppose that the tobacco is formed into tablets similar to the chocolate tablets, and which, iudeed, is the shape which the chewiDg tobacco of sailors and Yankees takes, and we have a colossal pile worthy of being placed beside the third largest of the pyramids of Gizeli, that of the Mykerinos, and as massive and as high as that old regal edifice. Let us grind all the tobacco into snuff, and let us picture to ourselves the sad case that an evil equinoctial wind one fine morning blows the snuff over the o;ean, and showers it on one of our German states, we are certain more than one of the Liliputian states would have much difficulty in recovering its existence by shoveling away the snuff.— Cope’s Tobacco Plant.