86 TOBACCO LEAF. 



ground is frozen or covered with snow, or for more than 

 eight months. It is true, the period of active growth 

 required to mature a hay crop begins in spring, and is 

 finished in three months ; but during the year previous, 

 for at least five months, the grass roots are storing up 

 food in their root stocks, or bulbs, for the more rapid 

 aftergrowth. Tobacco, on the other hand, cannot be 

 set out in the field before summer is begun, and it 

 should be in the shed in about three months. Thus, 

 its growth must be a very rapid one, and the supplies 

 of food in the soil must be very abundant, so that the 

 rapidly extending roots may be met at every point with 

 their necessary pabulum. An acre of first-rate grass 

 land yields, as the result of eight months' growth, two 

 to three tons of crop, while the tobacco land must yield 

 that weight in three months. 



The real disparity, however, is much greater. The 

 principal growth of tobacco is accomplished in the hot- 

 test summer weather and in a period of some forty or 

 sixty days. Very heavy fertilizing is, therefore, neces- 

 sary, to provide for its nourishment, and the more so 

 because the best tobacco lands are light in texture and 

 may suffer from loss by drainage, evaporation or decom- 

 position, to say nothing of drouth. 



TOBACCO DOES NOT EXHAUST THE SOIL. 



One of the most important truths established by the 

 application of science to tobacco, is the annihilation of 

 the old idea that this crop exhausts the soil to an extra- 

 ordinary degree. It is true that tobacco requires plenty 

 of food in the soil, as we have just pointed out. But if 

 this is obtained by growing the crop on virgin soil, 

 and by not returning to the land what the crop 

 takes from it, then tobacco does exhaust the soil ; so 

 will any staple crop under the same treatment. This 

 was the method long followed, especially in the South, 



