One of the peculiarities of the tobacco plant is that a very slight change in the conditions under which it is grown will effect a considerable change in the character of the leaf produced. Plants raised in soils composed of precisely the same chemical ingredients will yield quite different tobacco when those ingredients happen to be present in varying proportions. In Cuba, as elsewhere, it is no uncommon thing to find tobacco of the highest grade upon a piece of land within a stone’s throw of another field where only the poorest quality of leaf can be produced. This is a fact that should be remembered by prospective purchasers of advertised Cuban lands. Promotion companies and agents frequently offer tobacco acreage at high prices, which they justify by statements of the production of adjacent _vegas_. Often the purchaser finds himself in possession of a worthless tract lying alongside of one which is yielding handsome profits to its owner. There is very little land in the tobacco districts of Pinar del Rio which has not been tried out and it is not safe to buy anything unless it is actually in cultivation. In Oriente there is plenty of good tobacco land available, but up to the present it has not been made to produce a grade of leaf equal to what is termed _partidos_. Tobacco is raised in the most widely separated parts of the earth and in the most diversified climates. The world’s annual crop of the leaf approximates 2,000,000,000 pounds with a value in the raw state of about $225,000,000. Of this volume, Cuba produces no [Illustration: WELL-DEVELOPED TOBACCO PLANTS.] more than 60,000,000 pounds in a good year, but receives for it about $20,000,000. These figures clearly indicate the comparatively high price which the Cuban leaf commands. Fully three-fourths of the total crop comes from Pinar del Rio, the remainder mainly from Habana and Santa Clara. Oriente is fast coming to the fore as a tobacco producing province. A very small proportion of the product of Pinar del Rio, and probably none of the output of other parts of the Island, is true “Cuban tobacco.” After the Ten Years’ War, foreign seeds, chiefly that of Mexican tobacco, were used extensively to revive the ruined _vegas_. These exotic varieties throve and almost entirely usurped the place of the original plant. Greatly improved by the Cuban environment, the greater part of the Island’s output is, nevertheless, Mexican tobacco.