SCIENCE IN ITS APPLICATION. 91 



It appears that the full yield of Connecticut tobacco 

 takes from the soil less nitrogen than a good crop of 

 corn grown under similar conditions, but little more 

 than potatoes, but twice as much as rye. Of potash, 

 tobacco takes even less than potatoes, but several times 

 as much as corn or rye. Of phosphoric acid the other 

 crops take two or three times as much as tobacco. In 

 Virginia leaf, the same relative proportions hold, though 

 the quantities differ, the average crop of tobacco taking 

 about the same quantity of nitrogen, nearly five times 

 as much potash, but only one-third as much phosphoric 

 acid as a wheat crop of thirty bushels per acre. 



SOME RELATIONS OF BACTERIA TO TOBACCO 

 CURING AND MANUFACTURE. 



BY WILLIAM FBEAB. 



There are several distinct classes of organisms to 

 whose activity the various fermentations are traced. 

 First among these may be named the molds, distin- 

 guished by the formation of a closely interwoven net- 

 work of white, thread-like cells, or hypha ; from this 

 network, or mycelium, spring little stalks, swelling or 

 branching into larger heads ; these heads, in turn, bear 

 the colored spores, or reproductive elements, appearing 

 as a fine dust upon the upper surface of the grayish- 

 green or black molds to which jellies, cheese and bread 

 kept in damp places are subject. Molds also multiply 

 by the branching out of new hyphse, affording the root 

 from which new stalks may spring. 



Another class of organized ferments is that to which 

 yeast belongs. The organism is much simpler in these 

 cases than in the molds. It is composed of only a sin- 

 gle cell, or papery sac, filled with jelly-like protoplasm. 

 This protoplasm carries on, however, most of the func- 

 tions of more highly organized beings. Yeasts repro- 

 duce by budding, the sprouting from the side of the 



