Show X know 20 moab blon tobacco va N riet les cannot be fed too 11 without danger that a plant with a large coarse textured leaf will arm be produced the aock amk loom lent brings a low price cobo ju M which usually more than offsets the Ine reuse in yield the maryland hi ammoth has a great cu for gro it IR can be fed heavily with W e le fertilizers and will PRY P good returns for theta while at the same time it produces a leaf of excellent quality this variety was such a ant grower that difficulty was experienced in getling it to produce seed it m as during the progress of the in trying to solve the seed production pro bleto that the momentous and fundamental discovery was made of the influx f AR 0 A jl gavase C 6 JOHN DICKINSON SHERMAN k n 0 w 6 7 M V that uncle sam is a successful tobacco grower on a big scale in fact he raises something like pounds a year 11 1 out or the worlds crop of a but only a comparatively few know that uncle tancle sam has of late years gained worldwide world wide tame fame as a tobacco doctor the tobacco production of the united states has been steadily increasing this increase in production has been brought about in the past by an increase in the acreage as new tobacco sections were discovered and developed ve loped at the same time the per acre yield did not hold its own in many sections the antl intimate ate relation between kind of soli soil and kind of tobacco was little understood little was really known about tobacco diseases and nd tobacco pests this Is where uncle sam came in n handy bandy as a tobacco doctor and achieved fame Now nowadays adaya the yield per acre Is increasing more careful adaptation of tobacco to soil discoveries about tobacco diseases and new methods method of handling the crop now dow seem to indicate that the yearly production can be increased without increase la in the acreage and with more profit to the grower uncle sam tobacco doctor hag worked through the department of agriculture ri and the experiment stations some of the investigations and discoveries are as interesting as beneficial even the soil boil men entomologists chemists plant breeders bleeders bre eders pathologists and bacteriologists who have worked out the tobacco problems it are 3 1 surprised at some of the results A report prepared by the department ot of agriculture sets forth some of the interesting te resting results of tills tobacco doctoring for instance everyone ere used to think that the fermentation of tobacco in the curing process was caused by bacteria just as Is the fermentation of apple juice in the manufacture of elder cider and vinegar but it was found out that in the case of tobacco bacteria had nothing to do with it it the tact fact Is that the leaves of tobacco contain certain chemical compounds known IS aa enzymes velch under certain conditions of mo moisture lature and temper temperature sture produce fermentation this dl discovery scover has led to great improvements in the curing of the leaf now kow it Is possible by the tha use of the thermometer to control the curing and greatly to increase the percentage of high grade tobacco in the northern districts where it was thought to be necessary to cure tobacco in cases it was found that bulk curing could be carried on just as it was in the southern districts tho the adoption of this method has saved the InN investors estors many millions OC 0 dollars the marvelous development of the shade grown gron tobacco industry in the connecticut valley Is built upon the foundation of government investigation formerly this district had bad produced a domestic wrapper tobacco the best beat of which sold tor for around 20 cents a pound wrapper tobacco from sumatra at the name time sold for 3 a pound or more by making tests testa of the te tent method of grow growing ing tobacco it was wall found that under these cheese cloth shades conditions could be produced very favorable lavo rable to the of t sumatra tobacco in CO connecticut vill 0 we this meant much to the cigar making industry the sumatra leaf Is large very thin and elastic and of a beautiful satiny texture A pound of it will cover a thousand cigars although it costs from 10 to 20 times as much as the domestic wrapper it Is largely used by the trade so the growing of this crop under cloth has become the principal industry of a large section of the connecticut valley another important discovery Is that of the steam sterilization of tobacco beds of old the grower sometimes had great difficulty in growing plants for transplanting into the field they we would uld become diseased in the bed with resulting large losses weeds also caused much trouble it to the young plants now the enterprising tobacco grower eliminates both of these difficulties by going over the bed with mith a steam sterilizer which kills the weed seeds and des destroys troa the disease organisms which would attack atack the youn plants As a result the production of 7 good healthy young plants Is now relatively easy if diseases attacked the tobacco plant only during the early stages of its growth in aie the bed the tobacco grower would have an easy time indeed but there are many other diseases which ravage the plants in the fields one of the most destructive of these 1 Is 19 9 file one known as mos mosaic nl which ried plant pathologists for a long time they ba have ve now found out that it la Is a specific infection that a certain definite germ causes the trouble in addition to tills this they learned that insects are a factor in carrying it from plant to plant in the south the growers have suffered a great deal through losses produced by a wilt which has been named the granville Granv llla tobacco wilt the department part ment of agriculture worked out a rotation system which has greatly reduced the losses no cure has yet been found for the disease but the farmer now knows how to keep out of its ita path in regions of thin light soil tobacco farmers have long talked about a supposed disease which they called sand drown the trouble was not too much sand band according to recent discovery but the lack of magnesia a fertilizing element which Is not generally recognized by farmers as a being useful to plants usually enough of this element occurs in the soil to take care ot of the demands of any crop all the farmers have to do Is to change the plants rations slightly some great advances have been made in the field of plant breeding one oae particularly interesting variety of I 1 tobacco has teen keen developed it Is now dow ence of the length of day upon the growth flowering and fruiting of the plants tills this discovery has attracted the attention of scientists throughout the world and promises to produce great scientific and practical I 1 results its tobacco breeding work has hag produced valuable results in other sections tyl in the hurley districts the growers formerly discarded their tobacco ground after one or two years because of the destructive effect of black root rot to which hurley barley tobacco was particularly susceptible tests on a large number of plants brought out the fact that some of them were resistant to the disease and now resistant varieties make it possible for these tobacco growers to continue growing hurley burley tobacco on their fields year after year the same principle lias has been applied to other varieties in many regions since more than half of the tobacco produced in tills this country Is cured without artificial heat bad weather Is a big factor experiments have shown that a certain amount of heat beat usel at the critical time X will ill make it possible to cure the tobacco just as it the most fato favorable rable weather conditions existed from start to finish in the sections where heat beat la Is ordinarily used for the curing the flue cured tobacco districts improvements have been made in the ventilation of barns which have greatly improved the quality of the tobacco in preparing cigar tobacco it Is packed and allowed to ferment and sometimes big losses are experienced because of too much moisture in the leaves the most desirable moisture content has been determined ter mined and it Is now possible to avoid much of this loss the great increase in the popularity of the cigarette which Is now being produced at the rate of about 60 billions annually in this country as compared 5 billions in 1905 1903 has resulted in the change in the demand tor for different types of tobacco in the carolinas and virginia abera a large part of tills this tobacco Is produced government experimenters experiment ere found it possible to get a more desirable leaf for this purpose not by changing the type of variety but by modification of the harvesting methods entomologists have found a satisfactory method for lighting fighting the horn worm a destructive pest to the growing crop years ago growers depended upon applications of paris parag green often with the result that the tobacco was badly burned and the crop a partial failure arsenate of lead was developed as a substitute and horse drawn dusting machines have been developed A rough estimate Is that this one discovery saves the tobacco growers a m million 1110 I 1 n do dollars r 0 a year As to the pictures no I 1 shows a t crop of maryland mammoth yielding a ton an acre the average yield in maryland Is less than pounds no 2 shows the outfit used in sterll sterilizing lz tobacco seed beds no 3 gives an idea of what has been accomplished with ordinary white hurley barley on soil infested with black root nt r the plants on the lower stick are from a 2 resistant type ot of hurley barley grown on the same soil |