50 
Sturgis, who named the fungus Botrytis longibranchiata.! He recom- 
mends that all the diseased stems and leaves be collected and burned 
at once, before the fungus is further developed and before its spores 
can be scattered about by any current of air. He further suggests 
sprinkling the floor of the barn with a mixture of equal parts of air- 
slaked lime and sulphur, and the fumigation of the tightly closed barn 
with burning sulphur a fortnight before the tobacco is harvested, and 
again after the removal of the cured tobacco from the barn. It may be 
added here that washing the floor with thick milk of lime which has 
been recently slaked in the usual way has also been found beneficial. 
AROMA OF THE TOBACCO. 
The odor developed in smoking a cigar may be partly due to the 
mere volatilization of products of the sweat and partly to the destruc: 
tion of certain compounds. The heat of the glowing surface reach- 
ing the neighboring sections which are not in full contact with air 
~ causes there volatilization and various decompositions by dry distilla- 
tion. Products of pleasant and of unpleasant odor are components of 
the smoke, and it is the chief aim of the progressive dealers in the 
tobacco trade to reduce the amount of the latter components to a mini- 
mum. In the smoke of tobacco have been found besides carbonic acid 
and water, nicotine, ammonia, carbonic oxid, occasionally nicotianine 
and traces of hydrogen cyanide, and hydrogen sulphide. Recently 
pyridine, trimethylamine, and butyric acid have been found in it by 
Thoms.? The pyridine is produced by the decomposition of nicotine, 
while the hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulphide, and butyric acid are 
probably derived from protein compounds. 
The soil, climate, and weather on the one hand and careful treatment 
in the curing and sweating of the tobacco on the other have great influ- 
ence in the production of a cigar leaf having the proper aroma in 
smoking. This flavor must be distinguished from the odor which the 
sweated tobacco leaves show directly without being heated or smoked. 
The writer proposes to designate the former alone as aroma, while the 
latter will be called simply odor. The use of this distinction is made 
in the following lines. 
The odor of the sweated tobacco leaves doubtless stands in a certain 
relation to the aroma generated in smoking, generally a pleasant odor _ 
justifying the inference of a fine aroma; but this is by no means always 
so, and cases occur where a sweated tobacco of pleasant odor produces 
a disagreeable odor on being smoked. The aromatic substances may 
here escape perception because of the presence of other and undesirable 
compounds. The substances which impart the odor are easily soluble in 
water, since tobacco extracted with water and dried again has no longer 
‘Conn. Agr. Expt. Station, Annual Report, 1891, p. 185, 
*Chem. Zeitg., 1899, No. 80, 
