756 
Notes on the Cultivation of Tobacco. 
to which I can refer is the official statement to the Belgian 
Superior Council of Agriculture which I have already quoted. 
I quite agree with the conclusion arrived at by JNI. Demoor, 
after considering his array of Profit and Loss Accounts, that if 
tobacco does yield a considerable return in good years, on the 
other hand we must not forget that in unfavourable and stormy 
years the crop is worth very little. In illustration of this I may 
state that this autumn I visited a farmer in the North of France, 
whose crop of tobacco had been rendered practically worthless 
by a hailstorm, which occurred in the third week of August ; 
but the Regie insisted upon the crop being cured and delivered, 
although at the time of my visit it consisted of little more than 
the ribs of the leaves. Fortunately my friend's crops had been 
insured against hailstorms. On the whole, however, this year 
has been very favourable to growers of tobacco, in the districts 
which I have visited ; but last year was precisely the reverse. 
One final word of encouragement to English growers may be 
gathered from the experiments of JNI. Blot, the results of which 
1 have already indicated. It is well known that a September 
hoar frost is absolutely fatal to the tobacco crop. The great 
expenses of labour, manure, rent, rates, taxes, duty, &c., incurred 
for the purpose of a tobacco crop, may be absolutely lost in conse- 
quence of a frosty night at the time when the tobacco is becoming 
fit to be harvested. But !M. Blot tells us that the best tobacco 
is that which is harvested before it comes to maturity. If this 
should prove to be the case in our climate, there is more chance 
of tobacco being successfully grown in England than I ever anti- 
cipated, although, as I have tried to make it clear, the profit to 
the grower under this system is not so great, even on the Con- 
tinent as upon the old plan of harvesting the tobacco as it 
arrives at maturity. ]M. Blot's experiments have only recently 
been published, and his conclusions are eminently worthy of 
being put to the test by English pioneers in this new effort to 
grow tobacco in the United Kingdom. 
