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. Im general, the soils adapted to the 
production of flue-cured tobacco may be described as ight 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 lkely to be lacking in body and richness, and the soil 
itself is at a disadvantage in retaining fertility and is not lkely 
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 lght 
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, 1t was the almost universal custom to 
plant tobacco on “ fresh,” or recently cleared, land. On such land 
