234 Practical Farming 



and left to ferment and sweat. This begins in June and 

 is carried on for several months, and the tobacco often 

 reaches a temperature of 150 degrees or more. This 

 sweating process is necessary to ripen and bring out the 

 full flavor of the tobacco. If kept over to the second 

 year it will again ferment and improve in quaHty. When 

 the sweating is completed the end of the box can be opened 

 and the samples drawn from different parts to get a fair 

 sample of the contents for sale. 



The harvesting and curing of tobacco, it will be now 

 seen, varies greatly according to the different characters 

 of the crop and the purposes to which it is to be applied. 

 The bright yellow gold leaf of the South is very rapidly 

 cured and bulked by the growers, sorted by them and put 

 on the market by the time the crop of the seed leaf is being 

 cut. Hence, the proper curing of the different kinds of 

 tobacco is an art that can only be learned by the handhng 

 of each kind under the instruction of an expert and on the 

 spot. 



While a man can, by reading and study, become expert 

 in the growing of tobacco, no amount of mere reading and 

 study will make an expert curer. He must learn this 

 from doing it. 



