: Tobacco; Its History Varieties Culture Manufacture and Commerce by Billings E R - Tobacco use; Tobacco History; Tobacco industry History Horticulture

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ers a striking contrast with the more sombre hues of most other plants. When left to grow until the plants have reached full size, the tobacco field has the appearance of a vast flower garden, the tiny blossoms exhaling their fragrance and the entire plant emitting odors as rare and as delicate as the most fragrant exotic. In the tropics the finest tobacco plantations are found, as nature is more lavish, not only in the richness of the soil, but in the variety of the vegetable products. Here the tobacco plant attains its finest form and most delicately flavored leaves. The hues of the flowers are brighter and their fragrance sweeter. In the tropics the tobacco field may be scented from afar, as its odors are wafted on the breeze. In its native home it flourishes and matures as readily as the more common kinds of vegetation, while it affords the planter a larger revenue than many of the more useful of nature's products.

VARIETIES.

The tobacco plant almost vies with the palm in the number of varieties; botanists having enumerated as many as forty, which by no means includes the entire number now being cultivated. The plant shows also a great variety of forms, leaves, color of flowers, and texture. Each kind has some peculiar feature or quality not found in another; thus, one variety will have large leaves, while another will have small ones; one kind leaves flowers of a pink or yellow color, another white; one variety will produce a leaf black or brown, another yellow or dark red. The following list includes nearly all of the principal varieties now cultivated:--Connecticut seed leaf , New York seed leaf, Pennsylvania , Virginia and Maryland , North Carolina , Ohio Seed leaf , Ohio leaf , Texas, Louisiana , Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Havana, Yara, Mexican, St. Domingo, Columbia , Rio Grande, Brazil, Orinoco, Paraguay, Porto Rico, Arracan, Greek, Java, Sumatra, Japan, Hungarian, China, Manilla, Algerian, Turkey, Holland , Syrian , French , Russian, and Circassian. Many of these varieties are well known to commerce, and others are hardly known outside the limit of their cultivation.

All of these varieties may be divided into three classes, viz.: cigar, snuff, and cut-leaf tobacco. The first class, cigar leaf, includes all those varieties of tobacco that are used in the manufacture of cigars, and embraces the finest quality of tobacco grown, including Connecticut seed leaf, Havana, Yara, Manilla, Giron, Paraguayan, Mexican, Brazilian, Sumatra, etc. The second class embraces all of the varieties used in the manufacture of snuff, such as Virginia, Holland , Brazilian, French , etc. The third class includes all of those tobaccos used for smoking and chewing purposes, such as Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Maryland, Latakia, Perique, Turkish, and others.

South American tobaccos are almost exclusively used for the manufacture of cigars. Although of various qualities, they possess the distinctive flavor which characterizes all tobacco used for this purpose. This is generally the case with most of the tobacco grown in the tropics--it seems to be especially adapted for the manufacture of cigars, rather than for cutting purposes. European tobaccos are milder in flavor, and are used extensively in the manufacture of snuff; while the tobacco of the East is well adapted for the pipe.

Tobacco to be used for cigars must not only be of good flavor, but must burn freely, without which it has no real value for this purpose. Non-burning tobaccos cannot be used, and are either employed in the manufacture of snuff or for cutting.

Of the many kinds of tobacco of both the Old and New World, doubtless the most curious of all is that kind known as

DWARF TOBACCO.

This plant is a native of Mexico, and was discovered by Houston, who found it growing near Vera Cruz. This is probably the smallest kind of tobacco known. The plant grows to the height of about eighteen inches, the leaves growing tufts at the base of the plant. Some have supposed this tobacco to be what is known as Deer Tongue, which is used for flavoring, but it is quite probable that it is entirely different. The leaf is small and light green, and it is quite a showy plant when in blossom. As a curiosity it can hardly fail to attract attention from all those acquainted and interested in tobacco, but will hardly admit of cultivation, on account of the absence of leaves, with the exception of the few growing near the ground. Of all the tobaccos used for the manufacture of cigars, none have obtained an equal reputation with the famous and much sought for variety known as

CONNECTICUT SEED LEAF,

which in all respects towers far above the seed products of the other states. The varieties cultivated in the United States and known as "seed leaf" tobaccos, are grown in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin. All of the seed leaf of these states is used exclusively in the manufacture of cigars. Connecticut seed leaf is justly celebrated as the finest known for cigar wrappers, from the superiority of its color and texture, and the good burning quality of the leaf. The plant grows to the height of about five feet, with leaves from two and one half to three feet in length and from fifteen to twenty inches broad, fitted pre?minently by their large size for wrappers, which are obtained at such a distance from the stem of the leaf as to be free from large veins.

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