280 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



near the roots, on the morning of a day of sunshine, and 

 should lie singly to wither. When sufficiently withered the 

 plants should be laid in close heaps under cover to sweat 

 forty-eight hours or more. After this they should be hung 

 up under cover to dry. This may be done by running two 

 stalks on the sharp ends of a stick about eight inches long, 

 and suspending them across a pole about sixteen incnes 

 apart, in a pretty tight apartment. As the plants become 

 dry they may be placed nearer to each other, to make room 

 for more, if necessary. When they have hung till there is 

 no greenness in the leaves, and at a time when the air is damp, 

 the leaves should be stripped off the stalks, tied up in hands, 

 and packed away in chests or casks, well pressed down, 

 and kept in a dry place, not in a cellar, which would soon 

 spoil the tobacco. 



The use of tobacco for chewing and snuffing is uncleanly, 

 unwholesome, and becoming unfashionable with the more 

 respectable parts of the community. The habit of chewing 

 it, however, is not easily broken. A writer for the National 

 Intelligencer^ with the signature 'J. B.,' states, in substance, 

 that he was suffering under a pulmonary complaint supposed 

 to be brought on by chewing tobacco, and that by making a 

 substitute of slippery elm bark^ and swallowing the juice, he 

 at once got rid of his disorder and his propensity to chew 

 this poisonous plant. The dust or powder of tobacco, 

 thrown over beas where plants are just coming up, preserves 

 them from worms. It is said, also, that a few tobacco plants 

 set out among cabbages and turnips, the tobacco plants about 

 one rod apart, will save the cabbages and turnips from in- 

 sects. 



M. M'Louvin, in Loudon's Magazine, observes as follows : 

 ' I procure from the tobacconists a liquor expressed from to- 

 bacco, to every gallon of which I add five gallons of water ; 

 this mixture, with Read's garden syringe, I sprinkle over the 

 trees, putting it on the finest rose, and being careful to wet 

 all the leaves ; this operation is performed only in the hot- 

 test sunshine, as the effect is then much greater than when 

 the weither is dull. In this manner I have this spring, with 

 five gallons of liquor, reduced as above stated, cleaned seven- 

 teen peach and nectarine trees, twelve of which average 

 seventeen feet in length and twelve in height. The black 

 glutinous insect, provincially called blight, so destructive to 

 the cherrjr trees, is destroyed in the same way with equal 

 facility. I have also found that the grubs which attack the 



