No. 4.] HARVESTING AND CURING TOBACCO. 85 



of drying the air, the feeling being that it was an endless task 

 to dry all the air that cuukl come in from outside. Do I un- 

 derstand that you advise ventilation as well as heat in moist 

 weather ? 



Dr. Garner. Yes, for the reason that the object is not to 

 dry the air but to increase its capacity to take up moisture 

 from the tobacco. Suppose the temperature is 60° F., and it 

 is raining outside. The atmosphere will take up no more 

 moisture, as it is saturated. But if we heat the air in the barn 

 to 80° F. it will take up twice the moisture that it will at 00°, 

 because each increase of 20° in temperature doubles the capac- 

 ity of the air for holding moisture. Then, if you let in damp 

 air from outside it becomes heated and takes up more moist- 

 ure. On the other hand, there is danger in applying heat and 

 keeping the barn closed if the weather is wet outside, as you 

 simply stinmlate the tobacco to give oif more moisture in the 

 barn and do not remove the moisture. You must make a dis- 

 tinction between drying and curing tobacco. It must not dry 

 too rapidly, but let it cure as rapidly as it will. 



^Iv. H. J. Searle. I would like to inquire what apparatus 

 there is that gives any promise of being of advantage to the 

 ordinary tobacco grower. We understand that open charcoal 

 fires in the ground are undesirable, also steam heat. 



Dr. Garner. We are experimenting with a system of flues 

 and furnaces which we hope to be able to announce definitely, 

 in a short time, as a successful method. The furnace is very 

 simple, a home-made furnace, simply a hole in the ground, 

 with an ordinary cover and a flue leading out from it. We use 

 wood as fuel. We are using a double vent once across the barn 

 and return. Each pipe runs out doors, and we have a furnace 

 for each vent. It may be that after further experiment we will 

 find that we can get along with a single vent, or can run sev- 

 eral of them into a central exit flue. There are a good many 

 things about this system of which we are not certain as yet 



Mr. Graves. If the roof has no ventilator and you put heat 

 in the bottom of the barn that will drive the damp air to the 

 top, is it possible to heat that damp air? 



Dr. Garxkr. With a loosely shingled roof there will 1)0 a 

 good many crevices ihrough which the air can escape, thus 



