432 On the Culture of Tobacco. 



Swedish turnips, give a double dose of well rotted manure, mix 

 the seed with fifty times its bulk of sand or bone-dust, and sow 

 with Common's turnip drill, usually called French's, about 

 the middle of May. When the plants come up, they may be 

 thinned out as turnips are, 16 or 18 in. apart, and topped in 

 the beginning of August. The rest of the process may be con- 

 ducted as bv Brodigan, drying, however, in a barn or house 

 heated by an iron stove. A cottager or spade-cultivator may 

 rind it worth his while to sow in a hot-bed or in a flower-pot, 

 and transplant; he may dry his leaves the first time under the 

 eaves of his cottage, and the second time in his garret; or, if 

 the quantity is small for home use, in his kitchen. For his 

 tobacco liquor, or sauce, he may grow a score or two of poppy 

 plants, collect the opium from them, and mix this with whisky, 

 or spirit of any kind, in which abundance of peach leaves, or 

 a few leaves of Laurus nobilis, or one or two of the common 

 laurel, have been infused, adding water and salt as directed 

 above. A gardener, where there hot-houses and hot-house 

 sheds, may dry and ferment in them; and, indeed, with such 

 opportunities, and seeds of N. repandum, he ought to grow 

 better tobacco than any person whatever, not in Virginia or the 

 West Indies. 



The produce, in America, is from 1000 to 1500 lbs. per 

 acre; in the county of Wexford, 1200lbs. ; and in Meath, Mr. 

 Brodigan has had at the rate of 1680 lbs. per English acre. 

 In Virginia, the leaves of four plants, each occupying a square 

 yard, give a pound of tobacco. The money-cost of production 

 in Ireland, Mr. Brodigan estimates at 18/. per acre, where the 

 land is prepared by horse-labour; and 30/. where it is prepared 

 by manual labour. The produce, at 16/. 8s, per hogshead of 

 1350 lbs., barely pays the expense of horse-labour. 



The value of tobacco, as an agricultural crop, is much dimi- 

 nished from the circumstance of its producing no manure. The 

 farmers of Virginia, as Jefferson predicted, have now ascer- 

 tained that it is better to raise wheat, at 1 dollar per bushel, 

 than tobacco at 8 dollars per cwt. As a source of labour, Mr, 

 Brodigan thinks the culture of tobacco a desirable employment 

 for the rural population of Ireland. Its great advantage is, that 

 it affords employment for those intervals when the labouring 

 poor are at present destitute of occupation. " The cultivation 

 of a potato crop is of vital importance to the Irish peasant; but 

 as soon as that crop is planted, there is a long interval of idle- 

 ness and distress. The stock of potatoes is then generally ex- 

 hausted, or unfit for use, and the summer months are the most 

 pinching times with the poor. The planting of tobacco may be 

 s tid to commence when the other is finished, and the field ma- 

 nagement occupies the interval until the corn harvest. Againj 

 between the corn harvest aud thetakiug up of the potatoes then 



