TOBACCO AND ITS CULTURE. 157 



I have already stated that the cultivation of tobacco pre- 

 pared the land for future abundant crops. But, I am asked, 

 How this can be, when the crop is so exhaustive? I answer, 

 by saying, that the tobacco crop is not an exhaustive one to 

 the land ; that in the Connecticut Valley the farms have 

 been growing richer ; that they are in a higher state of fer- 

 tility in consequence of its cultivation. 



We admit that in the older States the lands have become 

 run out as the result of tobacco growing, but this only shows 

 the shiftless management of the Southern planters". Such 

 may be the case in New England to a small extent, where 

 some parts of the farm have been robbed of their fertility to 

 raise tobacco on a few acres. But I am glad to state, that 

 so far as I know, in this valley the crop is raised in rotations 

 with other crops over the farm. It is true that the tobacco 

 plant is a gross feeder, or, more correctly, requires land in a 

 high state of cultivation to insure a crop, and for the reason 

 that the plant has but a short time in which to mature, and 

 of necessity must tind nourishment to push forward its 

 growth ; but it leaves the land in a high state of cultivation. 

 For the truth of this statement, witness the enormous crops 

 which follow. 



A neighbor cut last season (by estimation) from five acres 

 of land, fifteen tons of hay at the first crop. This was the 

 second vear of mowing after tobacco. Another neighbor 

 harvested from one acre, after tobacco, fifty bushels of wheat. 

 Another, from less than two acres, eighty bushels. 



Prof. S. W. Johnson in his report made to the State 

 Board of Agriculture of Connecticut, in 1873, page 401, 

 says that "the farmer who should raise a crop of thirty- 

 eight bushels of corn, and sell it and the stalks also off the 

 farm, would export more than goes off in eighteen hundred 

 pounds of tobacco leaves, save what could be replaced by 

 a bushel of lime and a half bushel of plaster." He further 

 says: "Tobacco is commonly reputed to remove from the 

 land a great deal of potash. Hay and potatoes considerably 

 exceed it, though, in this respect, and less potash is required 

 for the entire tobacco crop than for the entire corn crop ; '' 

 and further, " Clover requires and carries away more lime 

 than tobacco." " The growth of tobacco is a very rapid one, 



