70 VIRGINIA LANDS. 
manner truly exemplary, and productive of public good.” 
Fairholt says of the same subject :— 
“Jt was sometimes the custom with planters to reset the 
suckers, and thus grow a double crop on one field, such con- 
duct was disallowed ; for the reason that the crop was inferior, 
and the more honest grower, who conscientiously cleared his 
slants, and gave them abundance of room to grow, was dis- 
lionextly competed with; and the first rate character of the 
Virginian crop prejudiced by the action.” 
Fairholt makes a mistake in speaking of the planter as 
re-setting the suckers, and his statement shows him to be 
entirely unacquainted with the habits of the plant. As soon 
as the plants are harvested, the stump of the plant remaining 
in the ground. puts forth one or more vigorous suckers or 
shoots, which often in a good season grow almost as high as 
the parent stalk. In some tobacco-growing sections one or 
two crops of suckers are gathered besides the first crop. 
The Creole planters in Louisiana are said to grow three 
crops in this manner, the first or parent crop and two growths 
of suckers. The quality of leaf, however, is greatly inferior, 
as it is small and thin and lacking in all the qualities neces- 
sary for a fine leaf. The planters now adopted new methods 
of culture, and cultivated several species of the plant known 
as Oronoko and little Frederick, although they did not fer- 
tilize the fields, even when the soil became impoverished, but 
simply took new fields for its culture. 
_ Hugh Jones says of the kinds of tobacco grown in 
Virginia :— 
“The land between the James and York rivers seemes 
nicely adapted for sweet scented tobacco; for ’tis observed 
that the goodness decreaseth the farther you go to the north- 
ward of the one, and the southward of the other; but this 
may be (I believe) attributed in some measure to the seed and 
management, as well as to the land and latitude: For on 
York river in a small tract of land called Diggens neck, which 
1s poorer than a great deal of other land in the same latitude, 
by a particular seed and management, is made the famous 
crop known by the name of E Dees, remarkable for its mild 
taste and fine smell.” He speaks of the planters and their 
plantations as follows :—“Neither the interests nor inclina- 
tions of the Virginians induces them to cohabit in towns: 80 
