a grin that is half amusement, half
contempt, as he answers: 'No, sar, deys jis burnin' a
plant-patch.' For this is the first step in tobacco-culture.

"A sunny, sheltered spot on the southern slope of a hill is
selected, one protected from northern winds by the
surrounding forest, but open to the sun in front, and here
the hot-bed for the reception of the seed is prepared. All
growth is felled within the area needed, large dead logs are
dragged and heaped on the ground as for a holocaust, the
whole ignited, and the fire kept up until nothing is left of
the immense wood-heap but circles of the smoldering ashes.
These are afterward carefully plowed in; the soil,
fertilized still further, if need be, is harrowed and
prepared as though for a garden-bed, and the small brown
seed sown, from which is to spring the most widely-used of
man's useless luxuries. Later, when the spring fairly opens,
and the young plants in this primitive hot-bed are large and
strong enough to bear transplanting, the Virginian draws
them, as the New Englander does his cabbages, and plants
them in like manner, in hills from two to four feet apart
each way. Lucky is he whose plant-bed has escaped the fly,
the first enemy of the precious weed. Its attacks are made
upon it in the first stage of its existence, and are more
fatal, because less easily prevented, than those of the
tobacco-worm, that scourge, _par excellence_, of the tobacco
crop. Farmers often lose their entire stock of plants, and
are forced to send miles to beg or buy of a more fortunate
planter. Freshly-cleared land--'new ground,' as the negroes
call it--makes the best tobacco-field, and on this and the
rich lowlands throughout Southside is raised the staple
known through the world as James River tobacco.

"On this crop the planter lavishes his choicest fertilizers;
for the ranker the growth, the longer and larger the leaf,
the greater is the value thereof, though the manufacturers
complain bitterly of the free use of guano, which, they say,
destroys the resinous gum on which the value of the leaf
depends. Once set, the young plant must contend, not only
with the ordinary risk of transplanting, but the cut-worm is
now to be dreaded. Working underground, it severs the stem
just above the root