CASING. 463 
carefully graduated pressure put upon it until ready for 
baling. In Java, when the tobacco is ready to pack the leaf is 
examined, and if found quite brown, it is tightly pressed and 
packed up either in boxes or matting for exportation, or in 
the bark of the tree plantain, for immediate sale. 
The next process on the tobacco plantation is that of 
PRIZING, CASING, AND BALING. 
The term prizing originated in Virginia, and as performed 
by the early planters, is thus described by an old writer on 
tobacco culture :— 
“Prizing, in the sense in which it is to be taken here is, 
perhaps, a local word, which the Virginians may claim the 
credit of creating, or at least of adopting; it is at best tech- 
nical, and must be defined to be the act of pressing or 
squeezing the article which is to be packed into any package, 
by means of certain levers, screws, or other mechanical 
powers; so that the size of the article may be reduced in 
stowage, and the air expressed so as to render it less pregnable 
by outward accident, or exterior injury, than it would be in 
its natural condition. 
_ “The operation of prizing, however, requires the combi- 
nation of judgment aad experience; for the commodity may 
otherwise become bruised by the mechanic action, and this 
will have an effect similar to that of prizing in too high case, 
which signifies that degree of moisture which produces all 
the risks of fermentation, and subjects the plant to be shat- 
tered into rags. The ordinary apparatus for prizing consists 
of the prize beam, the platform, the blocks, and the cover. 
The prize beam is a lever formed of a young tree or sapling, 
of about ten inches diameter at the butt or thicker end, and 
about twenty or twenty-five feet in length; but in crops 
where many hands are employed, and a sufficient force 
always near for the occasional assistance of managing a more 
weighty leverage, this beam is often made ofa larger tree, 
hewn on two of its sides to about six inches thick, and of the 
natural width, averaging twelve or fourteen inches. The 
thick end of this beam is so squared as to form a tenon, 
which is fitted into a mortise that is dug through some 
growing tree, or other, of those which generally abound con- 
venient to the tobacco house, something more than five feet 
above the platform. Close to the root of this tree, and 
