SOILS OF MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT. 41 
leaf tobacco; hence a normal price for many years has been $150 to 
$200 an acre, though it is now considerably higher than that. It is 
also a good onion soil, but brings no more profitable returns from 
that crop than a loam which, under identical cultural treatment, 
gives a cigar leaf so much thicker and poorer in quality that no one 
longer persists in trying to grow tobacco on it. Hence a relative 
price for this soil type is $100 an acre where one location is in every 
way equal to the other. It should be noted, too, that the best of the 
tobacco lands contain 1.5 to 2.75 per cent of organic matter. Hence 
the natural adaptation of that soil does not depend, it need hardly 
be said, on an unusual organic content; neither may other soils of 
that locality, though just as favorable for the growth of cigar leaf in 
every respect save that of texture and structure, be so amended by 
the addition of humus as to produce leaf satisfactory in quality. 
Dr. Frear, in Bulletin No. 20 (above referred to), quotes Tscher- 
batscheff, a Russian tobacco specialist, who has studied with care 
tobacco culture in America, as follows: 
In Virginia and North Carolina the heavy or shipping tobacco is usually grown 
upon heavy loamy soils which for the most part have a red or dark brownish- 
red color and contain almost no humus. The tobacco of golden yellow color and 
pleasant aroma requires no thick layer of humus, so that for its culture * * * 
a sandy, or sandy loam, soil is selected. 
The experience of growers is that this crop requires heat rather 
than moisture. In fact, in the presence of an excess of moisture it 
grows rapidly, the parenchyma thickens, and the leaf is larger, but 
at the expense of quality. Again, Mayor Ragland, of Virginia, is 
quoted as follows : 
A deep rich soil overlying a red or dark brown subsoil is best suited for the 
dark rich export type of tobacco. A gravelly or sandy soil with a red or light 
brown subsoil is the best adapted to the production of sweet fillers and stem- 
ming tobaccos. Allu vials and rich flats produce the best cigar stock. White 
Burley is most successfully grown on a dark rich limestone soil. For yellow 
wrappers, smokers, and cutters a gray sandy or slaty topsoil, with a yellowish 
porous subsoil, is preferable. The land must be loamy, dry, and warm, rather 
than close, clammy, and cold, and the finer and whiter the sand therein the 
surer the indication of its thorough adaptation to the yellow type. The soils 
so greatly affect the character and quality of the products that success is 
attainable only where the right selection of both soil and variety is made for 
each plant planted, and planters do well to heed this suggestion. Trial will 
determine what variety is best for any locality, as no one variety is best for all 
locations. To plant varieties unsuited to the type or on soil unadapted thereto 
is to invite failure every time. 
In the rapid development of tobacco growing in Florida and 
near-by States during recent years soil selection has been one of the 
most important factors; indeed, within that very considerable dis- 
trict possessing a suitable climate soil selection has been of chiefest 
