CULTURE AND CURING IN OHIO. 



135 



Under excessive and long continued cultivation the yellow upland soils become white and poverty-stricken. 

 The black upland soils differ from the last only in the fact that they occupy more favorable positions for catching 

 and retaining vegetable hurnus. This renders them light, friable, productive, and easy to work. They are always 

 found in depressions, and are excellent corn and tobacco soils. Some analyses made of the various soils by 

 Professor Wormley for the geological survey are here tabulated : 



The hills which surround the Chippewa valley reach a height of 1,200 feet .above the sea. These great rolling 

 hills rise up in gentle slopes. Their tops are supposed to indicate the surface of an original table land, which has 

 been deeply eroded and cut into ravines and valleys, giving a wonderful diversity to the surface. The soils are 

 clayey and adhesive, and are more suited to grazing than to tillage. The soil of the Chippewa valley is a very fertile 

 eandy loam, exceedingly friable and generous, and is from 10 to 20 inches deep. It has a dark ashen color, and in 

 consistency is rather fine-grained, though mellow. The trees indigenous to the valleys are elm, ash, beech, white 

 oak, and sugar-tree. The second bottoms are the soils preferred for tobacco, being free fr< m the dangers of overflow, 

 and generally warm and dry. Some gravelly lands in Medina county are cultivated, but not with the best results. 



COMPARISON OF CEOPS. 



The seed-leaf crop of Ohio was about 10 per cent, greater in 1879 than in 1878. and less by 12 per cent, than 

 the crop of 1877, and 5 per cent, less than that of 1876, and the quality was greatly inferior to that of the two 

 years previous. It was planted late, grew badly, had a greenish smell when cured, with but little gum, and in 

 appearance looked as though it had been drenched in water. The crops of 1878 and 1877 were not only of large 

 growth, but of excellent quality, ranking with the best ever grown in the state. The growth of the year 1876 was 

 good, but the weather was unfavorable for curing, and much of the crop pole-sweated in the houses. Indeed, so 

 excessive was the moisture, that in order to prevent an almost total destruction of the crop after it was harvested 

 many planters during the curing season of that year had to resort to light firing. 



VARIETIES OP TOBACCO GROWN. 



Many varieties of tobacco are cultivated in Miami valley, the principal being the long-leaf Baltimore Cuba; 

 Connecticut Seed-Leaf, five or six varieties, including Pennsylvania Seed-Leaf; Washington or Zimmer Seed-Leaf, 

 probably the Baltimore Cuba, or a modification of that variety. All those mentioned are large and leafy. 

 The Baltimore Cuba is generally preferred, because it- yields well, sweats a uniform dark color, has a fine, silky 

 texture, is tough, and has a good body. The Connecticut Seed-Leaf, while everything that could be desired a* to 

 size and delicacy of texture, does not cure up so readily with the dark color most desired by manufacturers, nor 

 does it yield so much per acre as the Baltimore Cuba. The seed of the latter variety was grown by Sinclair & Son 



and sold to the Department of Agriculture, from which it was distributed. Still another variety was sent out by 



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