16 TOBACCO. 



and all kinds of vegetables in a thoroughly putrid state 

 are very good, but it requires a great quantity, and the 

 immense labour to collect and prepare these, frightens the 

 greater number of vegueros, and few have sufficient con- 

 stancy to enable them to collect enough properly prepared 

 manure for their fields. 



" The most which some manage to do is to spread 

 refuse over some portions of land, where it rots and 

 fertilizes the soil ; but this system is inefficacious, because 

 the vegetable substances being very light, the heavy rains 

 wash away the greater portion of the decomposed matter, 

 and fully nine-tenths are lost. If the system was adopted 

 of depositing this manure in holes or trenches, from which 

 it can be removed when thoroughly rotted and fit for the 

 fields, it would produce much more with much less labour ; 

 for although at first sight the labour appears to be 

 doubled, by having to carry it twice, it must be 

 remembered that one load of well-prepared manure is 

 better than ten or twenty of grass or bush that is not 

 rotten. 



" But in every way there is great difficulty in collecting 

 vegetable manure in sufficient quantities ; recently, 

 guano has been tried with the most brilliant success. 



" Peruvian guano is the most compact fertilizer known, 

 and a very small quantity suffices to manure a tobacco 

 field ; its cost is not excessive, and is very frequently less 

 than the carriage of other manures to the spot where they 

 are to be used. Its most active results are shown on 

 light and sandy soil j it quickens vegetation, and experi- 

 ence has shown that it increases prodigiously the quantity 

 and value of crops ; we therefore recommend the use of 



