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narrow. For heavy stemming: Lacks, Yellow Mammoth, Beat-All, Orinoco Broadleaf, Blue Pryor, Morrow and Kentucky Yellow. For mahogany wrappers, cutters, fillers and bright smokers, the same varieties. are grown as for yellow tobacco, though some growers believe that a greater proportion of good wrappers is made from some of the new varieties bred by Mr. Ragland. Among those most heartily commended are: Conqueror, Ragland's Improved Yellow Orinoco, Bullion and the Long Leaf Gooch. It should always be remembered that varieties grown, even for specific purposes, will do better on some soils than on others. And every planter ought to test several varieties on his farm, in order to ascertain just which will give the best results, quality, quantity and demand considered.

CHAPTER IV.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE TOBACCO GROWN IN THE UNITED STATES, AND THE MARKETS FOR IT.

The cured product only of the tobacco plant is of marketable value. Each distinct soil formation, aided by climatic conditions, gives peculiar qualities to the cured leaf, as to texture, flavor, color and special fitness for varied uses and for different markets. The ability to cultivate the plant, or to cure the product, so as to give it such qualities as to make it desirable, is of the utmost importance to the grower, and upon his skill in this depend his profits.

In its green state there are many varieties of tobacco in which peculiarities of growth, size, or time of maturing, are the distinguishing features. Commercial circles recognize in the cured product classes, types and grades. The basis of a class is its adaptation for a certain use; the basis of a type is the combination of certain qualities, or properties, in the leaf, as color, strength, elasticity, body, flavor, etc., or in the methods employed in curing, as sun-cured, air-cured, fluecured, or cured by open fires. Grades represent the different degrees of excellence in a type, as lugs, lowleaf, medium, good, fillers, binders and wrappers.

To illustrate more fully: The heavy shipping tobacco is a class adapted to the requirements of the consumers in foreign markets. The yellow tobacco is a type that may be used for exportation, for smoking and for chewing, thus belonging to several classes. There may be eight or ten grades of yellow tobacco, each differing

from the other in points of excellence, but all belonging to the same type.

A district may produce only one type, which may be referred to several classes; that is, it may be suitable for exportation, for chewing, smoking, or the making of snuff.

A district may produce many types of the same class, as in New England, where several types of seedleaf and Havana seed are grown, yet all belong to the class of cigar tobacco and are used solely for that purpose. A district may also produce only one class of one type.

The classification first made in the census reports of 1880 has given the greatest satisfaction to the tobacco trade, and it is appended below, with a few changes rendered necessary by changes in demand. It must be observed, however, that many of these classes are interchangeable.

CLASS 1.

CHEWING TOBACCO.

(a) Tobacco for fine out and plug fillers.

Fine cut Burley.

Fine cut Mason county.

White Burley fillers.

Red Burley fillers (plug work).

Virginia sun and air cured fillers.

Virginia flue-cured fillers.

North Carolina flue-cured red fillers.

Carolina and east Tennessee flue-cured yellow fillers.

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PLATE IX. WHITE BURLEY (topped).

Wilted when photographed, but the peculiar appearance of the narrow-leafed or twist-bud sub-variety is well represented. Grown at Kentucky experiment station, Fayette county, on soil not especially adapted to tobacco. The crop on this exhausted soil, when fertilized with potash, is as large as on typical tobacco land. Hight of this plant, 35 inches; average top leaf, 21 inches long, 8 inches wide; middle leaves, 32x11 inches; lower leaves, smaller and variable. This sub-variety holds its leaves straight up, while in the White Burley, shown in Plates VII and VIII, the leaves hang down, often touching the ground when ripe.

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A large portion of English shippers are sent abroad deprived of the stem or midrib, and are called strips.

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Germany: German Saucer, German Spinner, Spangled tobacco from Ohio, Maryland and West Virginia, and fat lugs for smokers. Switzerland: Swiss wrappers and Swiss fillers.

Holland or the Netherlands: Dutch Saucer.

Belgium: Belgian cutter.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden: Heavy Kentucky and Tennessee types.

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PRODUCT SUITABLE FOR THE MAKING OF DOMESTIC CIGARS, OR FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF SMOKING TOBACCO.

Seedleaf and Havana seed grown in New England, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois and Florida.

White Burley lugs.

American-grown Havana.

Perique.

Lugs from the yellow and heavy tobacco growing districts.
Indiana and Kentucky cheroot and stogy wrappers.

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