State Agricultural Society. 275 



fore, that the curing should be complete before the rains. To attain 

 this, it is needful that cutting should have begun, as a rule, before the 

 middle of August. But in order that the plants may be sufficiently 

 matured for cutting at this time, planting ought to have been con- 

 cluded by the middle of May, and as much sooner as practicable. 

 Therefore, planting ought to begin (for Central California) with the 

 month of April, and in March, if possible. Further south, as from Los 

 Angeles to Tulare, all tobacco work ma}* be undertaken from one to 

 two months earlier. But at this date, only a " warm " piece of land 

 will, in general, be in fit condition to plant on. On "cold" land, 

 though the plants may start, they will not be apt to begin making 

 much growth before June. Then September may be well advanced 

 before the crop is cut. If now it be hung to cure in the field, the odds 

 are that it will be caught in one or two heavy rains before it can be 

 stripped and housed. These will darken the colors — even if they do 

 not spot and mold the leaves. The result is a rapid reduction in their 

 value. And while good tobacco is one of the most profitable crops that 

 is raised, poor tobacco may be quite the reverse. Bearing these needs 

 of the case in mind, the judicious farmer will decide only at the last 

 moment in the Spring whether or not he will set out tobacco on the 

 land that he may have proposed for it. Should the season be a late 

 one, and his land, after all, wet and cold, he may think better to seed 

 it to some other crop. It will bring a rousing crop of anything else 

 after having been tilled as I shall describe for tobacco. But when the 

 season opens with no special rigor, and this land has been duly put in 

 condition, let him plant with confidence. He is working in a surer 

 plant than wheat, or beans, or potatoes, or any other crop I know of. 



As to the effect of tobacco in " exhausting" land: an impression pre- 

 vails that land cropped to tobacco is worn out in a few j'ears. This 

 belief is based, no doubt, on the notorious fact that extensive tracts 

 have been worn out in the older tobacco-growing States, and confirmed, 

 perhaps, by the circumstance of Connecticut growers expending large 

 sums annually — ranging from two to three hundred dollars per acre — 

 on manures for their tobacco lands. But it should be remembered that 

 the Virginia and Maryland lands lasted near a century before they 

 did wear out; that the generation has not yet wholly passed away that 

 introduced the system of rotating crops on tobacco lands; that during 

 the three or four generations preceding, the lands were cropped to 

 tobacco without rest; that the Connecticut tobacco lands were already 

 old when first cultivated to that crop, and then required manuring to 

 produce good crops of anything. That it is only within the present 

 generation that it has been found necessary to apply manures exten- 

 sively on the tobacco lands of Cuba. That the extensive tobacco-grow- 

 ing operations long conducted in Ohio, with judicious rotation, have 

 not yet impaired the quality of those lands. Finally, I may state, that 

 there is a small field near Gilroy, in Santa Clara County, that has been 

 cropped to tobacco for thirteen years, and still turns off as luxuriant 

 crops as at the first. Some of the most available lands for tobacco in 

 California are subject to overflow, which deposits on them a fine slime 

 that is in itself the perfection of manure. So long as these lands 

 continue to be thus renewed, they will probably be proof against ex- 

 haustion by tobacco, or airy other crop. It is, of course, true that 

 tobacco is to be accounted among the "exhausting" crops; but the terror 

 in which it is held by some who are unfamiliar with its culture, is not 

 warranted by facts. Tobacco gives a good rotation for wheat, and may 



