30 TOBACCO LEAP. 



the time required for ripening. On the other hand, if 

 the sweet Havana or Virginia tobacco is grown in Con- 

 necticut or Pennsylvania, it becomes, year by year, more 

 delicate in texture, and more leafy and less sweet. The 

 fibers grow small, but the thickness of the leaf decreases, 

 and in time it makes a fine wrapper, but a poor filler. 

 It also grows quicker and ripens earlier than it did 

 further South. Attempts have often been made, in the 

 South, [to grow the seedleaf tobacco, but always with 

 failure. The writer once sowed seed of the best Penn- 

 sylvania seedleaf variety, and planted a crop upon soils 

 in Tennessee, resembling, in all particulars, the soils 

 upon which it is grown in Pennsylvania. The very first 

 year, the leaves *narrowed and became too thick for cigar 

 wrappers ; -the color, from a dark brown, became a cin- 

 namon red ; the aroma changed from that of the damp- 

 ish cigar odor to that of sweet chewing tobacco. The 

 comparatively gumless leaf of the parent became a rich, 

 waxy leaf with the offspring. And this was the result 

 of an experiment lasting for one year only. The modi- 

 fication was so pronounced that no one would have taken 

 it for a seedleaf variety. The Florida seedleaf, so 

 called, resembles the tobacco of Cuba more than it does 

 the tobacco of the seedleaf districts of the North. It 

 is thick, heavy, less expensive, and not so delicate of 

 fiber, but often very fragrant, with an odor not unlike 

 that of the Cuba tobacco, but not so strong. 



The long period of growth, in the Southern States, 

 gives tobacco ample time for the elaboration in its vesic- 

 ular system of the oils and waxes and gums that contrib- 

 ute to its sweetness and fragrance. Even saccharine juices 

 have been found stored up, in large quantity, in some of 

 the yellow tobacco of North Carolina and Virginia. We 

 infer, therefore, that two causes are constantly in opera- 

 tion to increase the number, or modify the character, 

 of existing varieties. These are soil and climate. 



