56 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



I have cultivated this season five-eighths of an acre of 

 tobacco, (the Connecticut Seed-Leaf.) The crop has been 

 excellent, and probably will be remunerative. As it is not yet 

 ready to strip, the amount of yield can only be approximated. 



About the first of January, the tobacco will be stripped, 

 sorted, formed into "hands," and put into bulk, to undergo the 

 sweating process, and in the course of a week after, will be 

 ready for the market. 



The amount of labor necessary to the cultivation of an acre 

 of tobacco is very great, but the profits also are large. The 

 amount of expense attending this crop, including everything, 

 has been ninety-six dollars, or one hundred and fifty-three 

 dollars and sixty cents per acre. I have roughly called the 

 product one thousand pounds, and the average price of the first 

 and second quality leaf at twenty-five cents. Both estimates 

 are probably below the true figures, which will be corrected in 

 the next annual report. 



It is an erroneous idea that tobacco is highly exhausting to 

 a soil which is well cared for. No plant can impoverish land 

 annually renewed by rich fertilizers, united with a judicious 

 rotation of crops. 



The tobacco fields of Virginia have grown poor, while those of 

 Connecticut and Western Massachusetts produce far more grain 

 and grass .than they formerly did, arising from the thorough 

 tillage of the latter, necessary to good tobacco crops, and the 

 application of the best manure, with the concentration of labor 

 upon a small compass ; in other words, making a farmer farm 

 well, or not farm at all. 



Since my last statement one acre of swamp-meadow has been 

 made into a cultivated cranberry-field. An adjoining bog having 

 been successfully experimented upon by spreading small quan- 

 tities of beach sand upon it in tlie winter, which made it very 

 productive, I determined to reclaim effectually the adjacent 

 piece. Instead of paring, which would have rendered the bog 

 too low, I had the sods inverted. Six hundred loads of sand 

 were carted on, in the winter, on the ice, and levelled to about 

 five inches deep. In June and July twenty-five thousand 

 bunches of vines were set out, averaging eigliteen inches apart. 



The amount of labor expended, exclusive of turning over the 

 surface and bunching the vines, which was done by the job, was 



