PLANTING, TOPPING AND PRIMING. 823 
this and the rich lowlands throughout Southside is raised 
the staple known through the world as James River tobacco, 
“On this crop the planter lavishes his choicest fertilizers: 
for the ranker the growth, the longer and larger the leaf, the 
greater is the value thereof, though the manufacturers com- 
plain bitterly of the free use of guano, which, they say, 
destroys the resinous gum on which the value of the leaf 
depends. Once set, the young plant must contend, not only 
with the ordinary risk of transplanting, but the cut-worm is 
now to be dreaded. Working underground, it severs the 
stem just above the root, and the first intimation of its pres- 
ence is the prone and drooping plant. For this there is no 
remedy, except to plant and replant, until the tobacco itself 
kills the worm. In one instance, which came under our 
observation, a single field was replanted six times before the 
planter succeeded in getting ‘a good stand,’ as they call it on 
the plantations; but this was an extreme case. 
“When the plants are fairly started in their growth, the 
planter tops and primes them, processes performed, the first 
by pinching off the top bud, which would else run to seed, 
and the second by removing the lower leaves of each plant, 
leaving bare a space of some inches near the ground, and. 
retaining from six to a dozen stout, well-formed leaves on 
each stem, according to the promise of the soil and season, 
and these leaves form the crop. The rejected lower leaves 
STRINGING THE PRIMINGS. 
or primings, in the days of slavery, formed one of the 
mitgireae? Ferquicites and were carefully collected by the 
