which has now grown to a fair size. Their first task is
to "sucker" it,--that is, cut away the shoots that spring up at the
intersection of each leaf and the stalk, and which if left to grow would
absorb half the strength of the plant. They also examine the leaves very
carefully, to destroy the eggs and young of the tobacco-fly. Day after
day they go over the same fields, finding newly-laid eggs and
newly-hatched young where only twelve hours before they brushed their
counterparts off to be trampled under foot. As the tobacco ripens, it
becomes brittle to the touch and is covered with dark yellow spots, and
when this appearance is still further developed the time for cutting has
arrived, which generally is in the first month of autumn, and always
before frost, which is as fatal to this as to every other weed. The
plant is now about three feet in height, with eight or nine large
leaves, the stalk having been broken off at the top in the second stage
of its growth. On the appointed day a dozen or more men with coarse
knives split the stalk of each plant straight down its middle to within
half a foot of the ground. They then strike the plant from the hill and
lay it on one side. The leaves soon shrink under the rays of the sun and
fall. One of the laborers who follow the cutters then takes it up and
places it with nine or ten other plants on a stick, which is thrust
through the angle formed by the two halves of the plant separated from
each other except at one end. It is deposited with the rest in an open
ox-cart and transported to the barn. In the barn poles have been
arranged in tiers from bottom to top to support the sticks; and when the
building is full of tobacco the laborer in charge ignites the logs that
fill parallel trenches in the dirt floor, and a high rate of temperature
is soon produced, and is maintained for several days, during which a
watch is kept to replenish the flames and prevent a conflagration. As
soon as the tobacco has changed from a deep green to a light brown, it
is removed on a wet day to the general barn. The same process of curing
is going on in many barns on the same plantation, and occasionally one
is burned down; for the tobacco is very inflammable, a stray spark from
below being sufficient to set the whole on fire.

The principal work of the autumn is the gathering of the ripe corn. A
band of men go ahead and pull the ears from the stalks and throw them at
intervals of thirty yards into loo