NOTES. 189 
The following account of the present mode of cultivating 
Tobacco in our Southern States is extracted from .4n Historical 
and Practical Essay on the Culture und Commerce of Tobacco. By 
William Tatham. London, 1800, 
«There are two distinct and separate methods of preparing 
the Tobacco ground: the one is applicable to the preparation of 
new and uncultivated lands, such as are in a state of nature, and 
require to be cleared of the heavy timber and other productions 
with which Providence has stocked them; and the other method 
ig designed to meliorate ‘and revive lands of good foundation, 
which have been heretofore cultivated, and, in some measure, 
exhausted by the calls of agriculture and evaporation. = 
sé'The process of preparing new lands begins as early in the 
winter as the housing and managing the antecedent crop will 
permit, by grubbing the under growth with a mattock ; felling 
the timber with a poll-axe ; lopping off the tops, and cutting the 
bodies into lengths of about eleven feet, which is about the cus- 
tomary length of an American fence rail, in what is called a 
worm or pannel fence. During this part of the process the ne- 
gro women, boys, and weaker labourers, are employed in piling 
or throwing the brush-wood, roots, and small wood, into heaps 
to be burned ; and after such logs or stocks are selected as are | 
gttitable to be mailed into rails, make clap-boards, or answer for 
other more particular occasions of the planter, the remaining 
logs are rolled into heaps by means of hand-spikes and skids ; 
but the Pennsylvania and German farmers, who are more con- 
versant with animal powers than the Virginians, save much of 
this labour by the use of a pair of horses with a half sledge, or a 
pair of truck wheels. The burning of this brush-wood, and the 
log piles, is. a business for all hands after working hours 5 and 
as nightly reyels are peculiar to the African constitution, this 
