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THE COUNTRYMAN.
BY J. A. TURNER. ——"independent in everything—neutral in nothing”—-— $10 A YEAR.
■ ■ • - 1 -r- ' ■ . . — —~
VOL. XIX. TURN WOLD (NEAR EATONTON) GA„ TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1864. ■ NO. 17.
•The Cultivation of Tobacco.—
To the Editor of the Confederate s—
There are lew of your readers, of eith
er sex, who do not use tobacco in one
way and another, either by chewing,
smoking, or ‘dipping,’ yet I venture
that not one in five hundred of them
in Georgia understands, or has a cor
rect idea of how it; is raised.
Of all things in common use, it is
the most troublesome to the farmer to
raise. So tender is the plant that the
slightest frost blights it—whilst a
drouth that would produce no impres
sion upon the cereals, affects it most
seriously.
In the mouth of February, a small
spot of ground (owing in size to the
amount intended to be planted) should
be cleaned off and made perfectly free
from roots and brush. Then logs must
be rolled upon it, fired and burned in
order to destroy the germs of all weeds
or grass that may be in the ground.
When that is done,and tl:e earth cool
ed, the ground must be so completely
pulverised as to leave not a clod in it.
The seed may then be sown thickly,
and covered with a small.rake to the
depth of one quarter of an.inch, and
afterwards the bed covencu $vith brush
to prevent birds and frost' from dis
turbing it.
Something over four weeks will
elapse before the seeds sprout and the
delicate infant plant appears above the
ground ; and two weeks more ere it is
large enough to transplant. This
will bring us to the second or third
week of April. But before this, the
field, or ‘tobacco patches,’ must be put
in perfect order. The plant does not
flourish in poor, or even in old land.
New ground is generally selected for
it. This should be cleared, grubbed,
pulverised, and small hills made of
the 6ize of one-eighth a sweet potato
hill,
The young plant must be taken
from its mother bed, and transplanted
immediately after a rain—after one of
those hard April showers that saturate
the earth with water. For a day and
better it will wither, droop, aud lose
nearly all symptoms of vitality, and
many bills will apparently die. No unne
cessary uneasiness need be felt on that
account, however. If the ground was
sufficiently moist it will take root and
grow.
It is here that its first enemy, the
■cut worm,’ attacks it. This is a worm
that crawls altogether at night, and
will sever the tobacco plant either un
der or just above the surface of the
earth, Various remedies for this have
been proposed> but it is not of that
branch I propose to treat. For two
weeks, now, no other attention is nec
essary, than the replanting of destroy
ed plants. At that time a small one-
horse plow must be run through the
rowsto plow down the weeds and grass
—the plow followed by the hoe to
complete the work. These rows are
generally tour feet apart, straight as
an arrow, and checked off like a
checkerboard.
The plant will now commence de
veloping and growing very rapidly,
and will be attacked by its greatest
enemy—the ‘tobacco worm,’ This
worm comes from a fly large as the
butterfly, but much shorter and thick
er through the body. The tobacco
fly flits over the patches between sun-
dp wn and dark, alighting for an in*
stant and depositing a small white egg
about every hundred yards. One of
these insects will lay fifty eggs in one
tiansit over the field. The egg is de
posited and webbed to the under side
of the leaf, and then in the course of
three days itis hatcher, by the warmth
of the sru. Thw prjmuct of';this egg
is a small green worm with six legs,
and a hard yellowish head. The first
day of its birth it will commence de
vouring the leaf, and it increases in
growth almost in proportion to the
bulk of food consumed. It is remark
able how rapidly the worm will'con
sume the entire plant except the main
stalk aud the stems. To prevent its
total destruction the farmer must ‘go
over’ his entire crop at- least twice a
week, examine every leaf, remove and
kill the worm.
About the middle of July the plant
will have arrived at sufficient height
to top, aud that process is performed,
with a reservation of one or two for
seed. After it is topped, suckers will
spring from the root of each leaf, all
of which must be removed at the time
the worms are. This process is known
as ‘worming and suckeriug.’
Towards the close of summer, or the
beginning of fall, the leaf will com
mence ripening by turning to a brown
ish hue. Preparations for cutting
must then be made by building scaf
folds, and splitting white oak sticks four
feet in length, and one inch in thick* J
ness. When the tobacco is fully ripe j
—which is known by its color—it is !
cut by the main stalk being split near
ly to the ground and severed below
this incision. Then it is remov.ed to
the scaffold, where it remains several
days, and is from thence taken to the
barn. The barn must be tiered off to
correspond with the length of the to
bacco" sticks. Trenches are dug in
the ground uu,der the tiers, and fires
built in them, and kept constantly
burning. This cures the leaf to that
rich, brownish hue we find it in when
bought for use.
After it is cured well, it is taken
down, stripped from the stalk, the
stems pulled out, and then packed in
hogsheads or boxes and compressed,
as the fancy of the manufacturer may
determine. But in stripping it is class
ified into ‘first rate, good rate, third
rate, and lugs.’ The stems and stalks
and all waste are carefully preserved,
ground into smoking tobacco, or con
verted into snuff. It requires a great
deal of experience to determine the
qualities properly.
But few people understand the dif
ferent grades, as a great deal of expe
rience is necessary to judge of them
correctly. It is almost universally
the case that February is again at hand
before the cropfsall compressed-,mark?
ed and sent to market—thus making
it a species of production that may be
said to be on band from one year to
another.
We used to get our best tobacco
from the Valley of James river of Vir
ginia, but as it is of all products the
most exhaustive to the soil, there are
many other sections whieh now pro
duce it better. The Cumberland Val
ley produces it well, but it does not
flourish'below the latitude of Mem*
phis. It requires the richest black
loam-land, and therefore only the in
ferior qualities can be produced South
of the line indicated.—A. F. Buick.
French Romanism.—“It is said
that Galiicanism, which was the rule,
thirty years ago, is now the exception;
that nearly all the Bishops are Ul-
tramontanists of the most violent kind;
that the most rampant Mariolatry is
extended ; and the worst pious frauds,
such as the alleged appearance of the
Blessed Virgin at La Salette, are coun
tenanced. As a consequence, a ma
jority of educated laymen are indiffer
ent or hostile to the Church, and there
is a marked increase of irreligion and
immortality.’’