CLASSIFICATION. 



The tobacco plant is cultivated over a wide area, or 

 range of territory, owing to its wonderful adaptation to dif- 

 ferent soils and climates. And yet, it is probably more de- 

 pendent upon its environment, and more greatly modified 

 in character and in quality by its surroundings, than almost 

 any other cultivated plant. Thus while Wisconsin and 

 Sumatra, Virginia and Cuba, make the production of tobacco 

 special features of their agriculture, and have become 

 centres of its production, still each locality produces its dis- 

 tinctive class or kind of tobacco. The variations in the 

 grade of Tobacco are so clearly the result of soil conditions 

 influenced largely by methods of cultivation and plant feed- 

 ing or fertilizer used, that they will be discussed separately 

 in this book. 



The location, soil and climate in which the tobacco crop 

 is grown, and the widely differing properties of these crops 

 lead to very marked differences in cultivation. In the trade 

 there are many sub-divisions for each class, or type, of to- 

 bacco handled, but for our purposes here, we will treat of 

 four classes, as follows: (i) Cigar Leaf, (2) Export Tobacco, 

 (3) Bright Leaf and Manufacturing and (4) Perique. 



(i) Cigar Leaf. Tobacco for cigar manufacture, in- 

 cludes three different types of leaf, viz , the Connecticut 

 seed leaf, the Cuban, and the Sumatra varieties. Moreover 

 there are different grades, resulting either from crossing or 

 from local conditions of soil, climate, planting or methods 

 of fertilizing employed. 



