1 Fes., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 93 
DIRECTIONS FOR CURING HEAVY PIPE AND EXPORT 
TOBACCOS. 
By R. 8S. NEVILL, 
Tobacco Expert. 
In cutting tobacco, if the day be cloudy, you may cut at any time; but if the 
sun be shining and hot, cut only late in the afternoon. Never cut or handle 
tobacco when it is wet, either from dew or rain. Never cut in the afternoon 
more than you can take up the following morning before the sun gets hot. 
Never cut after a hard rain, as it washes the gum off the tobacco, but wait a 
few days for it to gather gum again. 
The tobacco cut in the afternoon may be carefully and gently laid in piles 
of ten or twelve plants for convenience in hanging, unless you prefer to hang 
as you cut. 
In hanging tobacco on the stick, ¢¢ should not be put closer than four to six 
inches apart, according to size of plant. If put closer than this, you will have 
pole burn, and many leaves that will not cure, but dry up dead, dingy, and 
green. After putting the tobacco on tke sticks, put it on scaffolds in the open 
air, and if it is thoroughly wilted—that is, leaf and stem have become perfectly 
limber—you may put it close together. It is best for it not to get rained on 
while on the scaffold. If this should happen, however, open it out until it 
dries off, then close it up again. 
If possible, the scaffold should be placed where it will be shaded from 
11 till 2 o’clock. 
Let the tobacco hang on the scaffold for three, four, or five days until it 
yellows, but do not wait until it begins to cure or dry up; then remove to the 
barn, and hang it from 6 to 10 inches between the sticks, owing to the size of 
the plants, and regulate the tobacco on the sticks. 
Now begins the most particular part of the whole process of making 
tobacco, for it is now that you must fix in the leaf all the desirable qualities 
that go to make a valuable product: strength, elasticity of leaf, flavour, &c. 
Tf you wish to air-cure, your barns should be so constructed that they can 
be made very close or very open as may be required by weather conditions. 
If you desire to fire cure (and I recommeud this on account of the 
dampness of your curing seasons, and because fire-cured tobacco will resist 
deteriorating influences and conditions best), you want your barns closed in 
with plenty of ventilation around the eaves and in the gable-ends, and at the 
bottom of the sides ventiJation that can be closed or opened as desired, that 
you may be able to control and regulate it. 
If you desire to cure your leaf a bright colour, artificial heat is necessary, 
letting the tobacco stay on the scaffold and yellow, then fixing this colour 
with fire, but in air-curing it usually gets darker as the cure progresses. 
To cure with open fires, build small fires in pits over the floor of the 
barn, of slow burning woods, and keep them low and smothered, so as to 
produce a good deal of smoke, and keep a low temperature for the first twenty- 
four hours, not above 90 degrees, for a hot fire at the start will blue your 
tobacco. After the first twenty-four hours, raise your heat very gradually 
until by the end of forty-eight hours from the time of starting you may 
have it from 125 degrees to 135 degrees. After that, you may safely go to 
160 degrees or 170 degrees. Keep careful watch of fire, night and day, until 
the leaf and about half or two-thirds of the midrib or stem are cured, 
and then draw your fires, and allow the barn to cool. In afew days (from the 
sap left in the stalk and stem) you will find your tobacco has become soft, and 
the colours that were irregular before have run into each other, and formed a 
solid colour over the leaf. When this has taken place, then again build your 
fires, and continue them until the stem and stalk are entirely cured, when you 
