TOBACCO CULTURE IN THE WEST INDIES 19 
Sterilizing is for the purpose of killing the fungi, which 
on hot, damp days may destroy whole acres of seed-bed. 
There are three distinct methods of sterilizing viz: hot 
water, dry heat and chemicals, none of which have been 
brought to perfection yet, but doubtless within a short time 
some form of sterilization will be universally used. 
The water treatment consists of sprinkling the soil with 
boiling water so as to wet it to a depth of 2 inches, and in 
order to make the effect doubly secure it should be gone 
over in this way twice. The soil should not be stirred 
again before sowing the seed as that would spoil the effect, 
bringing some of the unsterilized soil, from deeper down, 
to the surface. 
Of chemicals, formaline has been used successfully at 
the rate of 4 pounds per 100 gallons of water. With this 
mixture the soil should be sprinkled just as with hot water. 
The dry heat method, which has been used for years 
where brush was burned on the land, is not practicable on 
a large scale but with improved machinery, using alcohoi 
or gasoline as fuel, this method will probably be the most 
pratical. 
SEEDING 
Tobacco seed is generally sown by hand and the results 
is invariably an uneven stand and usually from five to ten 
times more plants than the bed can accommodate. In order 
to produce a good stocky seedling each plant should have 
a space of one square inch and to accomplish this the seed 
should be sown in drills one inch apart, sowing it very 
thin, either by hand or by machine. As the seed is very 
small it should not be covered but the soil should be ligthly 
firmed with a roller or a board. 
