hoes and grubbing hoes. Aim to
keep the ashes and rich soil on the surface, and for this
reason a bed is sometimes damaged by a too deep working.
Rake carefully, getting off all the roots and trash. The bed
should be drained by a little ditch around it on the upper
side. If it is very early in the Fall, the seed should not
be sown until the danger of very warm days has passed. After
the last of November the sowing should be as soon as the bed
is prepared. A little less than a heaping tablespoonful to
ten steps square is about the quantity of seed. Cover the
seed very lightly with the rake or tramping the ground with
the feet. Cover the bed with a good layer of straight brush,
not enough to keep the light rains from the bed, but at the
same time enough to keep the ground in a moist condition
even in hot weather. Make a low close brush fence around the
bed to keep the leaves from being blown upon it. Re-sow
whenever the plants are well up, so as to have two chances.
Take off the brush cover when the plants are big enough to
shade the ground themselves. If the plants are rather thin
on the bed, do not uncover until you go there to draw the
plants. If there is any danger of a scarcity of plants,
always put the trash back after drawing."

In Cuba the

"SEMILLEROS"

or planting beds as a rule, lie higher than the rest of the farm. On
the large _vegas_ or tobacco plantations, numbers of planting beds are
made under the supervision of the mayoral. Siecke gives the following
account of making the beds or _semilleros_:

"On the island of Cuba any field selected for the
cultivation of tobacco is divided into long beds
(_Canteras_) twenty-five to twenty-eight feet long, and
nineteen to twenty inches wide. The soil is then manured
with a mixture of two parts of well rotten dung and one part
of either sand or fine sandy earth. During the months of
August, September, and even October, the beds are watered,
and the seeds mingled with the nine-fold quantity of fine
sand, are sown broad cast or through a fine sieve, and
immediately after covered with a mixture of dung and
triturated or molaxated earth, in such a manner that this
mixture forms a covering layer of about 1-32 inches.

"The utmost care is taken to protect the seeds against the
stifling heat o