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Concerning Pipe-weed
There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or 'art' as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered about it in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Master of Buckland), and since he and the tobacco of the about the year 1070 of Shire-reckoning. The best-grown still comes from that district, especially the varieties now known as Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star.'How Old Toby came by the plant is not recorded, for to his dying day he would not tell. He knew Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows, his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted.‘This,' he says, 'is the one art that we can certainly claim to be our own invention. When Hobbits first began to smoke is not known, all the legends and family histories take it for granted; for ages folk in the Shire smoked various herbs, some fouler, some sweeter. But all accounts agree that Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the Southfarthing first grew the true pipe-weed in his in the days of Isengrim the Second,