notwithstanding they make very good tobacco."

During the reign of the Stuarts, the plant was first cultivated in New
England but only in small quantities[19] and used solely for smoking.
About 1835 the plant received more attention from the farmers living
in the Connecticut valley containing some of the finest tobacco land
in the country. They found by repeated trials that the soil was well
adapted to the production of a finer leaf tobacco than any they had
ever seen. At this time Kentucky and Havana tobacco were used in the
manufacture of cigars, but on testing American tobacco or as it is now
known "Connecticut seed leaf" it was found to make the finest wrappers
yet produced, and consequently the best looking cigars. From that time
its reputation has kept pace with its cultivation, until it now enjoys
a world wide popularity. As a wrapping tobacco it towers far above the
seed products of other states and can never have a successful
competitor in the other varieties now cultivated in the Middle and
Western States. Doubtless America furnishes the finest varieties of
the plant now cultivated, suited for all kinds of manufacturing, and
adapted to all the various forms in which it is used.

[Footnote 19: "Every farmer plants a quantity of tobacco
near his house in proportion to the size of his family.
It is likewise very necessary that they should plant
tobacco, because it is so universally smoked by the
common people,"--_Kalm's travels in North America_,
1772.]

The great diversity of soil and climate renders this probable while
actual experiments and improved methods of culture have demonstrated
it to a certainty. Thousands of hogsheads, cases, and bales are
annually shipped to all parts of the world and the demand for American
tobacco is greater than for the varieties grown in the Old World. More
than two hundred and fifty years have passed since the London and
Plymouth Companies began its cultivation in the Old Dominion, and on
the same soil where the red man grew his "uppowac." Virginia leaf
still continues to flourish, and to-day it is the great agricultural
product of the State.

From a small beginning, like the plant itself it has developed into a
great and increasing industry and its culture become a source of
wealth unprecedented in agricultural history. Could the sapient James
I. and his successors the Stuarts, now look upon