46 TOBACCO GROWING IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



with mouldy dressing. The pressing is generally 

 done by the feet, with heelless shoes ; or, in 

 preference, the seed, when scattered, may be 

 lightly covered with fine garden-mould or rotten 

 manure, scattered with a sieve, not deeper than 

 half an inch. The seed ought to be sown so 

 that four plants grow to a square inch ; it will 

 germinate in from four to eight days. The 

 plants come up like cabbages, sown broadcast, 

 and require plenty of soft water, slightly warmed. 



The seedlings must be thinned as occasion 

 requires, and the ones pulled up be transplanted 

 into a sheltered nook of the garden, and kept 

 for replenishing the plantation. 



The seedlings, having been gradually and 

 perfectly hardened, must be removed into the 

 plantation not later than the 15th June, or from 

 four to eight weeks after sowing, the field being 

 already prepared for their reception in rows of 

 well-manured hillocks flattened at the top, where 

 a hole is bored and a young plant carefully 

 placed in each, — or simple furrows may suffice, 

 only care being taken to plant at equal distances, 

 giving each plant from one to three feet square 

 of ground, according to the size of the variety 

 grown. 



The furt.her cultivation of the plant is much 



