known but the exact nature of the changes that 

 take place during the process were not under- 

 stood. Since the discoveries of Louis Pasteur 

 regarding the part played by bacteria in gen- 

 eral fermentative processes it has been generally 

 claimed by bacteriologists that the changes 

 wrought in the leaf and the production of flavor 

 are solely the work of bacteria. Although this 

 view has not been proved it has never been 

 fully disproved, and there appears to be no 

 doubt that the microbes known to exist in the 

 leaf during the fermentation process play an 

 important part in the process. Fermentation 

 can only take place as stated under suitable 

 conditions of heat and moisture and these are 

 the conditions which favor the development of 

 microbes and enable them to work. The results 

 obtained are probably partially due to chemical 

 action and partly to bacterial action, the two 

 being complementary to each other. 



In 1899 Suchsland, a German scientist, 

 startled the tobacco world by asserting that 

 the flavor of tobacco was in no way due to the 

 effects of the soil and climate where it was 

 grown, but was solely due to microbic action, 

 and that the specific flavor and aroma of any 

 given tobacco could be artificially produced by 

 the cultivation of selected bacteria and allowing 

 the tobacco to cure and ferment under their ac- 



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