CASING. 463 



carefully graduated pressure put upon it until ready for 

 baling. In Java, when the tobacco is ready to pack the leaf is 

 examined, and if found quite brown, it is tightly pressed and 

 packed up either in boxes or matting for exportation, or in 

 the bark of the tree plantain, for immediate sale. 

 The next process on the tobacco plantation is that of 



PKIZING, CASING, AND BALING. 



The term prizing originated in Virginia, and as performed 

 by the early planters, is thus described by an old writer on 

 tobacco culture: 



" Prizing, in the sense in which it is to be taken here is, 

 perhaps, a local word, which the Virginians may claim the 

 credit of creating, or at least of adopting ; it is at best tech- 

 nical, and must be defined to be the act of pressing or 

 squeezing the article which is to be packed into any package, 

 by means of certain levers, screws, or other mechanical 

 powers ; so that the size of the article may be reduced in 

 stowage, and the air expressed so as to render it less pregnable 

 by outward accident, or exterior injury, than it would be in 

 its natural condition. 



" The operation of prizing, however, requires the combi- 

 nation of judgment and experience ; for the commodity may 

 otherwise become bruised by the mechanic action, and this 

 will have an effect similar to that of prizing in too high case, 

 which signifies that degree of moisture which produces all 

 the risks of fermentation, and subjects the plant to be shat- 

 tered into rags. The ordinary apparatus for prizing consists 

 of the prize beam, the platform, the blocks, and the cover. 

 The prize beam is a lever formed of a young tree or sapling, 

 of about ten inches diameter at the butt or thicker end, and 

 about twenty or twenty-five feet in length; but in crops 

 where many hands are employed, and a sufficient force 

 always near for the occasional assistance of managing a more 

 weighty leverage, this beam is often made of a larger tree, 

 hewn on two of its sides to about six inches thick, and of the 

 natural width, averaging twelve or fourteen inches. The 

 thick end of this beam is so squared as to form a tenon, 

 which is fitted into a mortise that is dug through some 

 growing tree, or other, of those which generally abound con- 

 venient to the tobacco house, something more than five feet 

 above the platform. Close to the root of this tree, and 



