TOBACCO CULTURE. Hot Beds -- Virginia Plant Patch -- Tennessee Plant Bed -- Cuban Plant Bed -- Covering Plant Bed -- Selection of Soil -- The Soil Affecting Color -- Preparing the Soil -- Virginia Methods -- Burning Brush -- Implements -- Transplanting Plants -- Setting -- Seasons in Mexico and Persia -- The American Transplanter -- Pests -- Worming -- Backward Plants -- Topping -- Suckers -- Maturation -- The Harvest -- Cutting -- Hanging -- Cutting time in Cuba -- Harvesting in Virginia -- The Season in other Places -- Curing -- Curing by Smoke -- Yellow Tobacco -- Stripping -- Assorting -- Shading -- Stemming -- Packing -- Casing -- Old Style -- Resistance to Dampness -- Prizing -- Marking -- Baling -- Certificates -- Firing -- White Rust -- Seed Plants -- Maturing of Seed -- Second Growth.................. 415 CHAPTER XIV. THE PRODUCTION, COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURE OF TOBACCO. Early History of Tobacco -- Cultivation by Spaniards at St. Domingo -- Annual Product of Cuba -- Amount of Land under Cultivation in U.S. -- Cultivation in the South -- Annual Product of Europe, Asia and Africa -- Government Monopoly -- Source of Revenue -- Manufacture of Cigarettes -- Increase of Tobacco Culture........................................... 478 CHAPTER I. THE TOBACCO PLANT. Tobacco is a hardy flowering annual[1] plant, growing freely in a moist fertile soil and requiring the most thorough culture in order to secure the finest form and quality of leaf. It is a native of the tropics and under the intense rays of a vertical sun develops its finest and most remarkable flavor which far surpasses the varieties grown in a temperate region. It however readily adapts itself to soil and climate growing through a wide range of temperature from the Equator to Moscow in Russia in latitude 56 deg., and through all the intervening range of climate[2]. [Footnote 1: The greater number of the species are annual plants; but two at least are perennial; the _Nicotiana fruticosa_, which is a shrub, a native of the Cape of Good Hope, and of China; and _N. urens_, a native of South America.] [Footnote 2: Tatham says that the tobacco plant is peculiarly adapted for an agricultural comparison of climates.]