No. 4.] THE TOBACCO TRADE. 1(17 



determined. Certainly four years are needed, at tlie least, 

 so that improvement by hybridizing is a slow process. 



Fourthly, starting from the Sumatra crops which were 

 grown under shade with seed from Florida, and which all 

 who saw them knew were a hodge-podge of many different 

 strains of Sumatra, as well as other typos, there has been 

 selected a single type of Sumatra, yielding twenty or more 

 wrapper leaves per plant, which, as fiir as shape and size go, 

 perfectly meet the present trade demands. This selection, 

 known as the "Uncle Sam Sumatra," has, I am told, been 

 introduced into Florida, and has this year given perfect 

 satisfaction. 



The experience we have had thus far in our breeding indi- 

 cates that, by very carefully selecting individual plants which 

 in size, number of leaves, as well as in size and shape of leaf, 

 are particularly choice, by protecting their flowers from for- 

 eign pollen and by using their seed alone, it is possible for 

 any farmer or any community to produce in a few years 

 crops with decidedly better leaf, as far as shape, size and 

 uniformity go, than we now have. The present method of 

 getting seed is irrational. It is not the best individual plants 

 that are selected, but a bunch of good-looking plants in one 

 spot, which will be out of the way of the teams at cutting 

 time. They are not protected from the pollen of any tobacco 

 plants growing within a mile, and, in consequence, their seed 

 yields plants less uniform than they should be. This method 

 is not only irrational, it is becoming antiquated. 



The advanced methods of the plant breeder are doing 

 much for other crops, — wheat, oats, corn, sugar beets, 

 onions. No crop needs them more than tobacco. 



I believe that if these methods were rigidly and generally 

 followed for five years we should find much less variation in 

 shape and size of leaf in our fields, and the difi'erent strains 

 of tobacco which are specially popular in one place or the 

 other would show much more distinctly than they do now, 

 because each farmer would select plants which showed the 

 strain characters which he favored, and these would be kept 

 from mixing with others. So much for the improvement in 

 size and shape of leaf of the varieties we now have. This 



