448 “ QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Juxx, 1898. 
men farming my land on shares, I furnishing seed and water. As the yield 
after a few years fell from 25 bushels to 15 bushels per acre, they asserted that 
it was because enough seed was not sown to the acre, so I told them to sow as 
much as they pleased. The man who had the newest and best land sowed 
14 bushels, two others sowed a bushel and a peck, and the fourth intended to 
sow a bushel, but from some cause he found when he was through that he had 
only sown 8 pecks. When the grain was 6 inches high, the man who sowed 
14 bushels had the finest field, as fine as any J ever saw; but at harvest time 
his was the shortest and thinnest, and yielded the least, while the man who 
sowed 3 pecks on the oldest land had the best yield of any. Where one man 
was sowing 5 pecks, I got him to sow a few rounds, with one-half shut off, and 
at harvest time (this was on old land) it was plain to see that the grain was 
taller, the heads larger, and it ripened more naturally. It was harvested with 
an automatic binder, and I found that in counting the bundles, 160 rods and 
back, there was exactly the same number of bundles in the one case as in the 
other, but the bundles on the thin sowing were the heavier. At another time, 
when one of the men was sowing a bushel, I had him sow 20 acres in the middle 
of the field, running 160 rods in length, with exactly half-a-bushel to the acre. 
This was treated every way exactly like the remainder of the field, and was 
harvested and threshed by itself, and it yielded 2 bushels to the acre more than 
the rest of the field. Mr. Langberg recommends that barley should be sown 
broadcast in preference to drilling, as it is not buried so deeply as when covered 
by a harrow. 
All these experiments were on land that was never manured, and never 
had grown any lucerne. On land that has been in lucerne one or more years, 
it is an easy matter to get from 40 to 50 bushels per acre with from 380 lb. to 
40 lb. seed. 
TOBACCO CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 
Mr. S. Powers, of Jacksonville, Fla., writes to the Weed :— 
The chief seat of cigar tobacco culture in West Florida is around Quincey, 
in Gadsden County. In the course of three visits to that noted region, made at 
different seasons of the year, your correspondent acquired facts and figures 
which may be accepted us authentic. Most of them were’ obtained from Mr, 
W.-M. Corry, the general manager of the Owl Commercial Company, who 
-annually plant about 1,000 acres of Cuban and Sumatra tobacco, and from Mr, 
Curry, one of their leading. men.. But in this letter I will confine myself to 
the statements of an independent farmer who has acquired his experience on a 
small scale, and which is therefore perhaps more satisfactory than that of the 
great company above mentioned, which has the advantage of unlimited capital 
in supporting and carrying on its operations. 
_ Mr. Robert Sylvester, who is now the manager of Major A. Lewis’s 
extensive tobacco plantation at Bonifay, in Holmes County, gives the results of 
his experience in Gadsden County. The best soil for tobacco is a grey sandy 
loam underiaid by a stiff red or yellow clay sub-soil; anda nature growth of 
hickory, oak, dogwood, and other hardwood varieties is a good indication of the 
best tobacco soil. Very good results have been obtained, however, on fine land ; 
and there are successful growers who assert that they ask nothing better than 
pure pine land with a rich, yellow, loamy sub-soil, such as the orange-growers 
delight in. Mr. Sylvester claims that the best Sumatra can only be grown on 
_ virgin soil, while Cuban can be raised on the same land in successive crops, 
though it is always best to alternate the tobacco year about with a manure 
crop, as cow-peas for instance. 
4 The best fertiliser is cotton seed crushed and cotton-seed meal ; the latter 
gives the plants a quick start; the former by its slower action, to feed the 
| Jants at a latter period and sustain them during the important crisis of leaf 
formation. Abcut 80 to 100 bushels of crushed seed and 500 to 800 lb. of the 
meal shou!d be app!’el per acre. 
