EXPERIMENT WITH TOBACCO. 87 



ing it. I harvested it and weighed it, and I got at the rate of 

 104.68 bushels to the acre on that poor miserable drift soil. I 

 should have got, according to the statement, if it had gone 

 through all right, one hundred and thirty-four bushels. It 

 was foolish to ask of that land one hundred bushels of corn, 

 but it gave me, in honest bushels, 104.68. In arriving at this 

 result I counted the missing hills, and estimated that they 

 would produce in the same proportion with the hills where 

 the corn actually grew. 



We tried the experiment with tobacco last year. Tobacco 

 is a contraband crop at the College, yet the farmers in the 

 Connecticut valley will grow it. I do not know whether their 

 moral character has gone down or not. They seem to be a 

 pretty clever set of fellows. They are working hard, slaving 

 themselves to death, growing poorer every year raising to- 

 bacco, and I thought if we could do anything to get them out 

 of trouble, it was well enough to do it ; so last year I went 

 off the College farm, for the experiment could not be tried 

 there, and tried the experiment. I will not take your time 

 by going minutely over the details, but the general statement 

 made was this : that I would make so many hundred pounds 

 of leaf and so many hundred pounds of stalk to the acre. 

 The man who owned the land, and the man who ploughed 

 and fitted it for me, both said that the land would not 

 bear one pound of tobacco leaf. It was nothing but coarse 

 gravel, and would not even bear rye. The owner of the land 

 said it would not grow tobacco in any way, and I need not 

 make any estimate that it would produce so much, because it 

 would not produce anything. But I put the material on to 

 one plot, and planted another plot without manure, to see 

 whether it would bear tobacco ; aud of a truth, it did bear 

 tobacco, even without manure. The plot with manure grew a 

 crop of most beautiful, fine, silky, white-burning leaf, and 

 gave me at the rate of one thousand nine hundred and fifty 

 pounds to the acre. Now, the experiment was a failure, for 

 I did not get so many pounds as I said I would, because the 

 plot without any manure, although everybody said it would 

 not grow tobacco, did grow something, and I was obliged to 

 weigh it ; and tobacco growers will appreciate the fact, when 

 I say that of this poor miserable crop, growing without any 



