208 SELECT PLANTS FOR INDUSTRIAL CULTURE 



greater atmospheric humidity prevails, needful for the best 

 development of the finest kinds of tobacco. Various districts, 

 with various soils, produce very different sorts of tobacco, parti- 

 cularly as far as flavour is concerned ; and again, various 

 climatic conditions will greatly affect the tobacco plant in this 

 respect. We can thus not hope to produce, for instance, Manilla or 

 Havannah tobacco in cooler latitudes ; but we may expect to pro- 

 duce good sorts of our own, more or less peculiar ; or we may 

 aspire to producing in our rich and frostless forest valleys a tobacco 

 similar to that of Kentucky, Maryland, Connecticut and Virginia. 

 Frost is detrimental to the tobacco plant ; not only, particularly 

 when young, must it be guarded against it, but frost will also injure 

 the ripe crop. Mr. Politz considers the scarcity of dew in some of 

 the districts of Australia to militate against the production of the 

 best kinds, otherwise the yield as a rule is large, and the soil in 

 many places well adapted for this culture. Leaves of large size are 

 frequently obtained. The moister and warmer northern and 

 eastern regions of Australia are likely to produce the best tobacco ; 

 but the final preparation of the leaf for the manufacturer must be 

 effected by experienced skill. The cruder kinds are obtained with 

 ease, and so are leaves for covering cigars. Virgin soil, with rich 

 loam, is the best for tobacco culture, and such soil should also con- 

 tain a fair proportion of lime and potash, or should be enriched 

 with a calcareous manure and ashes, or with well decomposed stable 

 manure. According to Simmonds the average yield in Greece is 

 about 800 pounds of tobacco per acre. The seedlings, two months 

 or less old, are transplanted. When the plants are coining into 

 flower, the leading top-shoots are nipped off, and the young shoots 

 must also be broken off. A few weeks afterwards the leaves will 

 turn to a greenish yellow, which is a sign that the plants are fit to 

 be cut, or that the ripe leaves can gradually be pulled. In the 

 former case the stems are split ; the drying is then effected in barns 

 by suspension from sticks across beams. The drying process 

 occupies four or five weeks, and may need to be assisted by artificial 

 heat. Stripped of the stalks, the leaf-blades are then tied into 

 bundles to undergo sweating, or a kind of slight fermentation. It 

 does not answer to continue tobacco culture beyond two years on 

 the same soil uninterruptedly. A prominent variety is Nicotiana 

 latissima (Miller) or N. macrophylla (Lehm), yielding largely the 

 Chinese, the Orinoco, and the Maryland tobacco. Latakia tobacco, 

 according to Dyer, is prepared by submitting the leaves for several 

 months to fumigation from fir wood. Substances containing 

 cuuiarin, particularly the Tonguin Bean (Dipterix odorata), are 

 used to flavour tobacco and snuff. The dangerously powerful 

 nicotin, a volatile acrid alkaline oily liquid, and nicotianin, a bitter 

 aromatic lamellar substance, are both derived from tobacco in all 

 its parts, and are therapeutic agents. 



