32 AGRICULTURE OX THE RHIXE. 



of the land. This is equivalent to 14s. and IGs. per acre. 

 Some details respecting this crop, which one of those 

 laws that are intended to puzzle posterity has excluded 

 from English rotations, may be acceptable to our readers. 



The plants are raised in a hotbed and transplanted. 

 The hotbed consists of a pit a foot deep filled with cow- 

 dung, and covered five inches with earth, on which a light 

 frame is placed that is covered with oiled paper instead 

 of glass, and sufficiently sloped to throw off the rain. 

 Horse-dung is found to be too hot for the plants, and it 

 throws up fungi, near which the tobacco does not thrive. 

 A bed of 320 square feet will hold plants enough for two 

 acres of land. The seed is sown in March, and must be 

 strewed equally over the bed, that the plants may be of 

 like size. The measure here used for 300 square feet is 

 fifteen Dutch pipes-full, a measure more amusing to read 

 of than difficult to use. When the seed is sown, the 

 frame is shut up, and the crevices everywhere closed with 

 moist clay or cow-dung. The covers are lifted in dry 

 weather every three days, in rainy periods every six days ; 

 the bed is watered sufficiently to keep it a little moist. 



The ground which is to be j)lanted with tobacco must 

 be ploughed five or six times. With the last ploughing 

 but two the dung is worked in. The last ploughing but 

 one brings the dung up to the surface, and it is again 

 covered with the last ploughing. The soil is thus 

 thoroughly mixed with the dung. The land, if large 

 enough, is divided into beds, and the plants are dibbled 

 in along a line, the dibble, of two feet and a half in length, 

 serving to measure the space between the planLs. The 

 planting out takes place in April : one hoeing in the sum- 



