Lynchburg Star

THE TOBACCOES OF MACEDONIA.

The following is the mode of cultivating these Tobaccos.

TOBACCO constitutes, next to cotton, the richest branch of Greek exports.

There are two species of tobacco cultivated in Macedon, which are known under the name of nicotiana latifolia and nicotiana rustica. The cultivation of this plant occupies an eighth part of the ploughed lands, and supports a population of twenty thousand families.

The tobacco is sown here in March, in lands recently watered, prepared by being ploughed twice, and manured with sheep's dung. The seed in greatest request is the smallest and most grown. It ought to be small, of a dark yellow colour, and of an acid taste. This seed is sown in small compartments, drawn at equal distances; each compartment is six inches broad, and three deep, and is intended to receive from ten to twelve seeds. The seed shoots up some days after it is sown; and, as soon as its stalk grows, and becomes strong, another soil is prepared, into which, in Florida, all the young plants are transplanted, which are ranged in order, on parallel lines, at the distance of a square foot. This is the second soil, which is proper for tobacco; the first serving only as a nursery. In dry seasons it is necessary to water the tobacco. As soon as the plants have attained about half their growth, and begin to shoot forth leaves, the earth which separates them is opened with a hoe, in order to raise it up in mounds, round each plant; this operation is called hoeing the stalks. As tobacco is an absorbent plant, it should be weeded with care, and not be suffered to be near the parasite plant.

In June, when the plant has got all its leaves, the cultivators castrate it; that is to say, they cut the top of the stalk, on which they leave more or fewer leaves, according to its strength. By this process the leaves thrive more, and ripen more uniformly.

Tobacco arrives at maturity in August. The leaves then turn yellow, incline towards the earth, and are separated from the plant without difficulty. The gathering, which is the task of women, is made in the morning, after the leaves have been moistened with the dew. They gather the finest and most ripe, one after another, and run them by the ends into long needles. They form thus bundles, from ten to twelve feet in length, which they set on end on pillars of wood, fixed into the earth, in a place much exposed to the free air and the rays of the sun. The leaves take on the drier the last degree of siccity, and at length become of a golden yellow colour.

The bundles, when dried, are carried away on carts, on which they continue till the gathering is finished; they are then taken off, the leaves are unrolled, and formed into small parcels, at the top and bottom of which they place, for the beauty of the sight, those leaves which are in the best preservation and of the finest appearance. These parcels are ranged in piles from four to six feet high, which are pressed down with large broad stones; the parcels continue in this state until the tobacco is packed up.

The field, which produces the tobacco, continues, after the gathering is finished, covered with an infinite number of naked stalks, which present in the autumn the appearance of a forest of reeds, which the least wind agitates, and whose thundering murmur resembles that of an angry sea. Those stalks dry up at the foot, and are an excellent manure for the ground, on account of the sharp salt they deposit there.