GROWING SUCKERS. 69 
its first introduction into England it sold for 3s. per pound, 
but as its culture increased the price lessened, until it was 
sold at one-half this amount. 
The. planters, who at first. cultivated small patches, now 
planted large fields of tobacco, and such was the greed for 
gain that some planters gathered a second crop upon the same 
field from the suckers left growing upon the parent stalk. 
Tatham* says in regard to it :— 
“Tt has been customary in former ages to rear an inferior 
plant from the sucker which a ba rom the root after the 
cutting of an early plant; and thus a second crop has often 
been obtained from the same field by one and the same course 
of culture; and although this scion is of a sufficient quality 
for smoking, and ‘might become preferred in the weaker 
kinds of snuff, it has been (I think very properly) thought 
eligible to prefer a prohibitory law, to a risk of imposition 
by means of similitude. The practice of cultivating suckers 
is on these accounts not only discountenanced as fraudulent, 
but the constables are strictly enjoyned ex officio to make 
diligent search, and to employ the posse commitatus in 
destroying such crops; a law indeed for which, to the credit 
ener 
ams WS OLLIE, 
DESTROYING SUCKERS. 
of the Virginians, there is seldom occasion; yet some few 
instances have occurred, within my day, where the consta- 
bles have very honorably carried it into execution in a 
. *Easay on Tobacco, London, 1800. 
