38 EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS. ~~ 
Of the 23 counties in Virginia that produce commercial quantities - 
of dark-fired tobacco, only about 15 produce each as much as 1,000,000 
pounds a year. 
The regular Virginia dark-fired type of tobacco, frequently desig- 
nated ‘‘brown shipping”’ to differentiate it from the olive-green or 
black stemming subtype, is marketed loose at auction at the various 
sales warehouses scattered throughout the dark-tobacco section. 
Lynchburg is the largest of these markets and alone handles about 
one-third of the entire dark-fired crop of the State. Other important 
dark markets are Farmville, Petersburg, Drakes Branch, Blackstone, 
Fic. 12.—Plant bed in woods, with cloth covering, showing the common method of growing plants in 
nearly all the export and manufacturing tobacco districts. (Photographed by the Bureau of Soils.) 
Bedford City, and Brookneal. A number of smaller markets are 
located at other points. 
The proportion of fine grades is generally considered to be larger 
in the Virginia dark-fired crop than in the western crop as produced 
in Kentucky and Tennessee, and the colors as a whole do not run 
quite so dark as does the ‘‘western”’ tobacco. As a whole, the 
heaviest bodied and best-textured dark-fired tobacco of Virginia is 
produced on the strong soils of the western portion of the district 
lying tributary to Lynchburg as a market center. A larger percent- 
age of leaf suitable for plug wrappers is obtained from this section 
than from any part of the dark-fired district. The rich but fine- 
textured chocolate soils in the coves among the hills scattered here 
244 
