THS TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[July 2, 1888. 
ghee did not seem to trouble them. The models 
of all kinds were grand. A tea planter's bungalow 
was being unpacked, and was not quite adjusted. 
Seeing the planter lying on his back behind the 
bungalow, I remonstrated at the bad effeot on the 
crowds of the sight of the helpless planter, but the 
" man " thought my wit was very poor. When I 
oame round again the Sahib was sitting up and 
trying to look sober in the back verandah. The 
Indian Court was very effective. 
The Machinery section was very grand. One thing 
would have driven me mad if I had looked at it 
long. Beside a revolving disc and apparently rest- 
ing on nothing was a brass ball which turned round 
with a brass rod connected with the disc. I cannot 
desoribe-it better, but the effect of the ball's position, 
when in motion, was that it was suspended in the 
air. I believe when the machine is at rest that the 
whole thing is easily understood. 
TOBACCO AND CHICOBY. 
By the Scout. 
" Good day. You've got that bit of wheat har- 
vested, 1 see, off the little ten-aqre paddock ?" 
" Yes, I've got it in, what there is of it, and that's 
little enough, too much wet when it went in and not 
enough afterwards." 
" What is the yield ?" 
" Seven bushels, and barely that." 
" What are they paying at the mill ?" 
" Three shillings ; so I'll get 21s an acre for seed, 
ploughing, harrowing sowing, stripping, putting into 
sacks, winnowing into the shed and into the dray, and 
carting. " 
" That other 10-acre piece on the flat— the corn, 
don't seem to cob well ?" 
" Cob ; no, if I get 15 bushels to the acre, it's more 
than I expect." 
" Well, if you could get a crop of another sort 
with a little more trouble off this 10 acres of 
wheat land ; that would bring you quite 20 times 
as much money, and another crop of different 
sort again, off that black soil in the flat ; that 
would bring you 20 times what the corn will 
with a little more trouble. I suppose you would 
try something else besides wheat and corn ?" 
"Not I. I've always grown wheat and corn, 
and it ain't muoh trouble— the wheat anyway — now 
we've got the stripper." 
"Well, but you've plenty of other land — good wheat 
land and good corn land too — you can grow wheat 
and corn still, and square 10 to 20 acres for other 
crops that will pay you better, though they are a bit 
more trouble." 
"No, I'll touch nothing but what I've always 
grown ; I'd rather grub along and chance the seasons 
with wheat and corn than bother about any other 
crops, though they'd pay me over 20 times as well." 
The possibility of such a conversation as this will 
hardly be believed, and yet there are hundreds who 
will read this who are acting as though they en- 
tirely agreed with the farmer, and preferred a return 
of 21s to one of B20 or £50 per acre. 
The fact that valuable products other than the 
ordinary cereals can . be, and are, in some 
few cases grown in this colony with com- 
plete success, has been stated in these columns, 
editorially and by correspondents, over and over 
again. The agriculturist iB proverbially conservative 
and averse to experimenting ; yet I have met 
instances where the desirability of increasing the 
number of eggs, and multiplying the number of 
baskets, as suggested, from time to time, in the Mail, 
haB been recognised as a practical and highly-bene- 
ficial thing. These instances are, however, few in 
Dumber tit present, and could be multiplied by nun- 
dreds with benefit to the producers and to the colony. 
"How is it to be done? " is probably in the mind 
of the reader. In many ways. I will refer again 
to two, to which attention was specially directed 
in this paper about 12 months ago, as well as before 
and since that time. I will suppose you are in a 
part of the country but little affected by frost and 
hail, and that you have, as so many men have, a 
bit of flat, low-lyiug or river bottom land on your 
farm. It is black soil anO almost any depth. If 
it is not growing corn it is probably producing a 
magnificent crop of black thistles, which are spread- 
ing all over the country each season. 
You are disposed to proceed cautiously at first, 
though the risk is but slight if you do not suc- 
ceed. So you fence off a patch of five acres of 
this black soil ; you cut down and burn off the 
thistles and weeds, and then put the plough in 
and break it up and harrow it, and it is clean 
and ready for a crop. In the meantime you have 
written to your seedsman for his catalogue, and 
probably to Messrs. Dixon and Sons for their 
pamphlet on tobacco, and you are ready with your 
pound or two of tobacco seed. This you sow in 
a small bed, say in your garden, thickly, as you 
would cabbage seed, and by the time your patch 
is fenced in, and the ground ready, the seed is 
probably up several inches, and ready to trans- 
plant. It being spring time then and the ground 
well worked and clean, you put in the young 
tobacco plants as you would plant out cabbages 
only you set them in rows 3ft. apart, and each 
plant 3ft. from its neighbour, so that each plant 
has a space of 3ft. all around it. Now your 
crop is in, and your care is to see that the ground 
is maintained clean, so that the plants derive 
all the nourishment possible from the soil, and 
that insects are not encouraged and propa- 
gated. Your lowlying black deep soil has much 
moisture in it, and the plants need it, and they 
require a fair supply of rain. If you are able to 
supply irrigation in case of need, so much the 
better. As you go through your crop from time to 
time you will see that caterpillars are not making 
free with it, and these you will pick off when they 
make their appearance. When the flower of the 
plant appears, you will remove it — that is, out the 
flower off, which is termed heading it— and the 
strength then goes into the leaves, which are the 
valuable part. While the plants are growing you 
have prepared your drying or curing shed. If you 
have not one suitable, you have built an open shed, 
9ft. to 12ft. in height, having a roof — bark will do, 
but not any walls. Across this shed just as the rafters 
go, you have placed numbers of light saplings a 
foot or two apart. Now, when the plants have 
attained their full growth, you cut and carry them 
to your shed, where, having made a deep cut into 
the heart of each, you set them by means of that 
cut, astride of the sapling rafters, until all are thus 
hung up to dry, which is the sole purpose of 
the curing shed. The drying of course is de- 
pendent upon the weather ; it may be a matter 
of weeks, or three or four months. If the sea- 
son be a very wet one it is usual to dig holes 
in the floor of the shed and keep slow fires going. 
In the large tobacoo-producing countries, the planters 
in some cases having drying-rooms with artificial 
draught and heat. I believe, however, that natural 
atmospheric drying produces the best tobacco. 
What is desirable to be known with reference to 
qualities of tobacco, <fec, you will have obtained 
from the pamphlet to which I have referred. Your 
tobacco being now cured and ready to send away, 
you pack it into bales and send it down to Sydney. 
Now, what have you got for your trouble? A yield 
of one ton per acre is a comparatively small crop, 
