TOBACCO CULTURE IN THE WEST INDIES 37 
that it contains, which when incorporated with the soil, 
makes it loose so that the air can enter; it makes it hold 
moisture better and it makes the plant foods in the soil 
soluble. 
In ‘Cuba, stable manure is often applied to some of the 
heavier tobacco soils, not too far from Havana, at the rate 
of from 40 to 50 tons per acre. This would be impractica- 
ble and too expensive in other parts of the West Indies, 
but applied at that rate it changes the physical condition 
of the soil in a short time. Unless the soil is very heavy, 
such applications are neither necessary nor desirable. 
The stable manure is usually dumped in the field in 
cart load heaps and left for days, weeks or months until 
spread over the soil and then usually left exposed to sun 
and rain for a long time before plowing under. In that 
way much of the plant food is lost and an overabundance 
is deposited in the soil immediately under and around 
where the heaps were dumped. The wethod has one advan- 
tage, which is not commonly recognized viz: the washing out 
of chlorine. All stable manure contains more or less chlorine 
and when applied immediately before planting, the result 
will be a tobacco of a lower burning quality. The best way 
is to apply the manure in the spring to land intended for 
planting the next fall. 
An ordinary tobacco soil having received ten tons of 
stable manure per acre is well fertilized compared with 
‘many receiving commercial fertilizer because that would be 
equal to 14 ton of commercial fertilizer per acre with for- 
mula 10 % to 12 % nitrogen, 5 % to 10% potash an 5 % 
to 10 % phosphoric acid, but as stated above, that is an 
undesirable formula for tobacco. To such soils an applli- 
cation of 200 pounds of sulphate of potash will greatly 
