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XXXI. Upon the Cultivation of Tobacco, for Garden purposes. 

 By Mr. John Wilson, Under Gardener at the Society's Gar- 

 den, at Chiswick. 



Read March 6, 1832. 



Tobacco is an article which is indispensable to horticultural pur- 

 poses. It is used to fumigate hot-houses ; large infusions of it are 

 put in most washes that are prepared for extirpating insects ; and 

 by drying, and grinding it into the form of snuff, it is found very 

 efficacious in destroying the green fly on peach trees out of doors. 



Its management is not generally understood in England. In 

 most gardens, the leaves are stripped off the plants in a green state, 

 and thrown together in a heap to ferment ; in general, little or no at- 

 tention is paid to the degree of temperature which such fermentation 

 should reach, and the usual consequence is, burning or rotting the 

 leaves. Tobacco so treated, has neither taste nor smell of Tobacco, 

 and when burnt in hot-houses, is by no means effective in killing 

 insects, without a great proportion of regularly cured and manu- 

 factured Tobacco being burnt along with it. Hot-houses also smell 

 very disagreeably for eight or ten days after being fumigated 

 with it. 



In Ireland, where Tobacco has of late years become an article of 

 field cultivation, the principle of fermentation has also been adopted ; 

 but it appears not likely to be attended with the success that was 

 at first anticipated. A paragraph which appeared in a Morning 

 Paper a short time back, went to show, that Tobacco is very much 

 reduced and wasted in Ireland by curing, and that the leaves be- 

 come as thin as silk : to remedy this evil, the writer of the para- 



