CUEING TOBACCO. 231 



permitting a somewhat smaller building for a given 

 acreage. 



If a new curing house is to be provided with the 

 heating apparatus, it would be well to build it two feet 

 higher than the needs of the tobacco alone would re- 

 quire, to provide more room for the pipes beneath the 

 lower tier. GofE thinks a curing house 100 feet long 

 would be sufficiently warmed with four 36-inch box 

 stoves, carrying seven-inch pipe, placed as shown in 

 Fig. 58. The stove should be let into a little basement, 

 bricked or stoned up beneath the sills. The pipes 

 should start from the ground level, and rise eight or ten 

 inches to the rod. If they come in the way of hanging 

 tobacco, remove a sufficient number of plants to make 

 room. They may be supported on temporary brick 

 piers, or suspended by wires from the poles carrying the 

 tobacco. That portion of the pipes extending outside 

 of the building will be more durable if made of galva- 

 nized iron, and should be capped with spark arresters, 

 but the remainder may be of common sheet iron. No 

 difficulty is experienced in securing a good draft, and if 

 the tobacco is not hung too thickly, the humidity of the 

 air in a tight tobacco barn will be found to respond read- 

 ily to the heat from the stoves, even where a very little 

 fire is used. After the curing is completed, the pipes 

 are taken down and stored for use next year. 



Curing Leaf Alone vs. Curing on Stalk. The bulk 

 of the cigar leaf grown in the United States is cured on 

 the stalk, that is, the plant is cut up at the bottom, 

 allowed to wilt, and then the entire plant is hung in the 

 barn, as described in the chapter on cigar leaf. In Flor- 

 ida, however, the crop is largely harvested leaf by leaf, 

 as described in the chapter on Florida tobacco. The 

 cost of handling each leaf separately was about one-third 

 higher than by the stalk system, at the Pennsylvania sta- 

 tion, and was quite as large at the North Carolina station 



