TOBACCO. 569 
varied operations through which it has to pass, and particularly as these 
relate to different varieties of tobacco. 
The principal points to be attended to if the best results are to be 
attained may be stated in a few paragraphs—paragraphs which, while 
referring mainly to shipping, manufacturing, and smoking tobacco as 
constituting nine-tenths of the tobacco grown in the United States, em- 
body principles and prescribe modes of management nearly identical 
with those to be considered in the treatment of other tobaccos. 
I. Select good land for the crop; plow and subsoil it in autumn to get 
the multiplied benefits of winter’s freezes. This cannot be too strongly 
urged. 
if. Have early and vigorous plants and plenty of them. It were better 
to have 100,000 too many than 10,000 toofew. They are the corner-stone 
of the building. To make sure of them give personal attention to the 
selection and preparation of the plant-bed and to the care of the young 
plants in the means necessary to hasten their growth, and to protect 
them from the dreaded fly. 
III. Coilect manure in season and out of season, and from every avail- 
able source—from the fence-corners, the ditch-banks, the urinal, the 
ash-pile. Distribute it with a liberal hand; nothing short of princely 
liberality will answer. Plow it under (both the home-made and the 
commercial) in February, that it may become thoroughly incorporated 
in the soil and be ready to answer to the first and every call of the grow- 
ing plant. Often (we believe generally) the greater part of manure ap- 
plied to tobacco—and this is true of the “ bought” fertilizer as well as 
of that made on the farm—is lost to that crop from being applied too 
late. Don’t wait to apply your dearly-purchased guano in the hill or 
the drill from fear that, if applied sooner, it will vanish into thin air before 
the plant needs it. This is an exploded fallacy. Experience, our best 
teacher, has demonstrated beyond cavil that stable and commercial 
manure are most efficacious when used in conjunction. In no other way 
can they be so intimately intermixed as by plowing them under—the 
one broadcasted on the other—at an early period of the preparation of 
the tobacco lot. This second plowing should not be so deep as the first; 
an average of three to four inches is about the right depth. 
IV. Early in May (in the main tobacco belt to which this article chiefly 
refers, that is to say, between the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels 
of north latitude), replow the land to about the depth of the February 
plowing, and drag and cross-drag, and, if need be, drag it again, until 
the soil is brought to the finest possible tilth. Thus you augment many 
fold the probabilities of a “stand” on the first planting, and lessen ma- 
terially the subsequent labor of cultivation. Plant on “ lists” (narrow 
beds made by throwing four furrows together with the mold-board plow) 
rather than in hills, if for no other reason than that having now, it 
never before, to pay wagesin some shape to labor, whenever and wher- 
ever possible horse-power should be substituted for man-power—the 
plow for the hoe. 
Y. Plant as early as possible after a continuance of pleasant spring 
weather is assured. Seek to have a forward crop, as the benefits 
claimed for a late one from the fall dews do not compensate for the many 
advantages resulting from early maturity. Make it an inflexible rule to 
plant no tobacco atter the 10th of July—we mean, of course, in the 
tobacco belt we have named. Where one good crop is made from 
later planting ninety-nine prove utter failures. Far better rub out 
and start afresh the next year. Take pains in transplanting, that little 
or no replanting may be necessary. The cut-worm being a prime cause 
