﻿4 BULLETIN 16, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



more clayey as one progresses westward toward the mountains. The 

 lighter Coastal Plain soils characteristically produce a brighter and 

 paler type of leaf than the Old Belt soils, but with less body and 

 richness. In the western part of the Old Belt, particularly from 

 about Rockingham County, N. C, and Henry County, Va., the rich 

 waxy filler types predominate, while the colors run in much larger 

 proportion to mahogany or red. Soil adaptation is a very important 

 factor in the production of a satisfactory quality of flue-cured to- 

 bacco. It is an influence of fundamental importance in determining 

 the color of the leaf produced, as well as such other points of quality 

 as fineness, richness, and body. In general, the soils adapted to the 

 production of flue-cured tobacco may be described as light and sandy 

 to a depth of 6 to 10 inches, underlain with a sandy-clay subsoil of a 

 yellowish orange color. 



The whiter soils produce the brightest tobacco, unless offset by 

 some other factor. The clay of the subsoil is an important factor in 

 giving the leaf richness and body, and it is also an aid in retaining 

 fertility. In the Coastal Plain section some of the soils are such 

 loose, deep sands as to constitute an extreme of the bright-tobacco 

 type. Such soils will naturally produce a very bright tobacco, but 

 the leaf is likely to be lacking in body and richness, and the soil 

 itself is at a disadvantage in retaining fertility and is not likely 

 to withstand wet weather well. On the other hand, the soils of the 

 Old Belt section, more especially in the western part, frequently 

 represent the other extreme of being too clayey and too red to pro- 

 duce anything more than a dark tobacco, although, generally, the 

 leaf will be rich and waxy. Between these soil extremes of the 

 New Belt Coastal Plain section, some of them tending to be too ex- 

 tremely sandy and open, and the clayey soils of the western part of 

 the Old Belt section, there is to be found almost every conceivable 

 variation in shade, depth, and mechanical structure. 



From a chemical standpoint, bright-tobacco soils are rather weak, 

 as is to be expected from their high content of sand or silica, but 

 most of them are very responsive to artificial enrichment by means of 

 fertilizers, manure, and soil-improving crops. The relatively light 

 soils which predominate in the New Belt section naturally are less 

 well supplied with mineral plant food materials, particularly potash, 

 than are the stronger soils of the Piedmont section. However, a soil 

 possessing ideal mechanical and chemical qualifications may be en- 

 tirely unsuited to tobacco unless it has good natural drainage, as it 

 is ruinous to a tobacco plant to stand for any length of time in a 

 water-logged soil. 



In the earlier days of tobacco culture, before commercial ferti- 

 lizers came into general use, it was the almost universal custom to 

 plant tobacco on " fresh," or recently cleared, land. On such land 



