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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.’’