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«essary nitrogen for its nutrition from the nicotine present. Concerning 

 the organisms which bring about the fermentation of tobacco, we 

 scarcely know anything, notwithstanding the great interest which this 

 question has of late years attracted, since the publication by Suchsland 

 of his idea of improved fermentation. His idea is founded on the same 

 point of view which led to the introduction of pure yeast into the fer- 

 mentation industries and of pure lactic ferments into creameries, etc. 

 Suchsland isolated the bacteria of tobacco from different sources, and 

 found great differences among them. The organisms observed were 

 mostly rod-shaped, less often spherical. They swarm on all raw tobacco 

 in great numbers, but of not many kinds. When Suchsland had culti- 

 vated them in pure cultures and brought them on to other kinds of to- 

 bacco, the result was that they flourished and brought about in such to- 

 bacco changes in taste and aroma, agreeing with that of the tobacoo 

 from which they were originally derived. Suchsland, therefore pro- 

 posed to inoculate before fermentation the ripe leaves of the poorer 

 kinds of tobacco, with germs derived from the finest tobacco, such as 

 Havanna, in order to obtain a good fermentation by means of these su- 

 perior kinds of bacteria. Stimulated by Suchsland's first attempt, A. 

 Koch experimented with Eichsfelder tobacco by adding to it cultures of 

 these superior germ s, and likewise obtained f avou rable results. Yet neither 

 of these investigators have published any further information concerning 

 the morphology and biology of the organisms which they have isolated, 

 and specially their action on tobacco in pure cultures. Among practical 

 men this method does not appear so far to have inspired much confidence. 



After fermentation has been completed, the raw tobacco is prepared 

 for the purpose for which it is ultimately destined, for which of course, 

 its treatment subsequently varies accordingly. In this respect, 

 it may be classed in two great divisions, of which the one comprises all 

 tobacco destined for smoking purposes, such as cigars and pipe tobacco, 

 while in the other is included the tobacco destined to be manufactured 

 into snuff and chewing tobacco. In both of these divisions the tobacco 

 has to undergo a certain preliminary treatment during which fermen- 

 tation phenomena play no unimportant part and must assist consider- 

 ably in preparing and improving the tobacco for the purposes for which 

 it is to be employed. Wagner mentions, especially among the means 

 adopted for the improvement of tobacco, the refining influence of age 

 through long storage, a method especially employed with pipe and cigar 

 tobacco. By this means, according to Wagner, many evil-tasting in- 

 gredients are destroyed or lessened on account of an imperceptible fer- 

 mentation. The taste becomes milder ; but if kept too long the tobacco 

 generally becomes tasteless. There are no researches shewing whether 

 the improvement of tobacco by storage is really partly or entirely due 

 to the activity of organisms. But on the face of it, it does not seem 

 either impossible or improbable, since for the purpose of ageing the to- 

 bacco, it is stored in a moderately warm and damp place under a limi- 

 ted access of air, thus the conditions are, in fact, favourable to the 

 growth of organisms. That storage does not always improve the quality, 

 and that under certain conditions organisms can grow which injure the 

 quality, every smoker of a cigar which has become mouldy through too 

 damp storage knows. 



Frequently, however, smoking tobacco after the first fermentation, is 



