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they spoke less and less with the Elves, and grew afraid of them, and distrustful of those
     that had dealings with them; and the Sea became a word of fear among them, and a token of death, and they turned their faces
     away from the hills in the west.
    The craft of building may have come from Elves or Men, but the Hobbits used it in their own fashion. They did not go in for
     towers. Their houses were usually long, low, and comfortable. The oldest kind were, indeed, no more than built imitations
     of
smials
, thatched with dry grass or straw, or roofed with turves, and having walls somewhat bulged. That stage, however, belonged
     to the early days of the Shire, and hobbit-building had long since been altered, improved by devices, learned from Dwarves,
     or discovered by themselves. A preference for round windows, and even round doors, was the chief remaining peculiarity of
     hobbit-architecture.
    The houses and the holes of Shire-hobbits were often large, and inhabited by large families. (Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were
     as bachelors very exceptional, as they were also in many other ways, such as their friendship with the Elves.) Sometimes,
     as in the case of the Tooks of Great Smials, or the Brandybucks of Brandy Hall, many generations of relatives lived in (comparative)
     peace together in one ancestral and many-tunnelled mansion. All Hobbits were, in any case, clannish and reckoned up their
     relationships with great care. They drew long and elaborate family-trees with innumerable branches. In dealing with Hobbits
     it is important to remember who is related to whom, and in what degree. It would be impossible in this book to set out a family-tree
     that included even the more important members of the more important families at the time which these tales tell of. The genealogical
     trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a small book in themselves, and all but Hobbits would find them exceedingly
     dull. Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already
     knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.
2
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 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 gardens in the days of Isengrim the Second, about the year 1070 of Shire-reckoning. The best home-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 much about herbs, but he
     was no traveller. It is said that in his youth he went often to Bree, though he certainly never went further from the Shire
     than that. It is thus quite possible that he learned of this plant in Bree, where now, at any rate, it grows well on the south
     slopes of the hill. The Bree-hobbits claim to have been the first actual smokers of the pipe-weed. They claim, of course,
     to have done everything before the people