EFFECT OF THE CROP ON THE SOIL 461 



Tobacco Soils and Effect of Soil on Type. In few if any 



crops does the soil have a greater influence on the quality of the 

 product than tobacco. Tobacco of fine texture and mild flavor is 

 produced on light, well-drained soils not too rich in organic matter, 

 while the large yields of heavy and stronger tobacco are grown on 

 the heavier and richer soils. The cigar wrapper tobacco is grown on 

 the fine sands and sandy loam soils of the Connecticut Valley and 

 Florida. In these soils the percentage of clay is low in both top and 

 subsoil and they are not retentive of moisture. The binder-leaf soils 

 of Wisconsin are sandy loams, light clay loams, and prairie soils 

 which are dark rich loams. The cigar filler soil of the Lancaster 

 district, Pennsylvania, is chiefly a limestone soil of the Hagerstown 

 loam. It is a strong and moderately heavy soil. On the sandy 

 loam soil of this district excellent wrapper leaf has been produced 

 under shelter, showing how great is the influence of soil on type. 

 Most of the tobacco grown in the Miami district is of the filler type, 

 and the soil is designated as the Miami clay loam and the Miami 

 black clay loam. 



The typical soils used in growing flue-cured tobacco of Virginia 

 and the Carolinas are light sands and sandy loams with yellow or red 

 subsoils containing small proportions of clay. The white Burley 

 tobacco reaches its highest development on the limestone blue-grass 

 soils of central Kentucky. White oak, beech, walnut, maple, and 

 hickory clearings are famous for the production of this tobacco. 

 Blue-grass sod that has lain in pasture for ten or twenty years or 

 more and on which stock have been fed to some extent produces good 

 quality of Burley tobacco and gives good yields. The dark-tobacco 

 soil of Tennessee and Kentucky is a heavy soil. A typical soil is 

 derived from the St. Louis limestone and it is a silt loam. The 

 soil is only moderately supplied with vegetable matter and is under- 

 lain by a very stiff and retentive clay. The Maryland tobacco, which 

 resembles the cigar-leaf and the white Burley, is grown in southern 

 Maryland on a silty or sandy soil gray or yellowish in color and 

 usually deficient in vegetable matter. 



Effect of the Crop on the Soil. -As suggested before, tobacco 

 is very rich in plant food, and this means that it draws heavily on the 



