o the inspector. To
regulate this effect upon the plants he must take care to be
often among them, and when too much moisture is discovered,
it is tempered by the help of smoke, which is generated by
means of small smothered fires made of old bark, and of
rotten wood, kindled about upon various parts of the floor
where they may seem to be most needed.

"In this operation it is necessary that a careful hand
should be always near: for the fires must not be permitted
to blaze, and burn furiously; which might not only endanger
the house, but which, by occasioning a sudden over-heat
while the leaf is in a moist condition, might add to the
malady of 'firing' which often occurs in the field."

In Virginia the manner of curing tobacco at the present time, is thus
described by a planter.
"For curing tobacco the simplest method is
sun-curing or air curing and the one most likely to prove
successful. The tobacco barn should be so constructed as to
contain four, five or six rooms four feet wide, so that four
and a half feet sticks may fit, all alike. Log barns are
best for coal curing. All should be built high enough to
contain four firing tiers under joists covered with shingles
or boards and daubed close. Fire with hickory all rich,
heavy, shipping tobacco.

"As soon as the barn is filled kindle small fires of coals
or hickory wood, about twenty fires to a barn twenty feet
square, four under each room. Coal is best, but hickory
saplings, chopped about two feet long, make a good steaming
heat. The successful coal-curer is an artist, and all
engaged in the business are experimenters in nature's great
laboratory." A North Carolina planter gives an interesting
account of curing tobacco yellow. "Curing tobacco yellow,
for which this section is so famous, is a very nice process
and requires some experience, observation, and a thorough
knowledge of the character and quality of the tobacco with
which you have to deal, in order to insure uniform success.
Much depends upon the character of the crop when taken from
the hill. If it is of good size, well matured and of good
yellowish color, there is necessarily but little difficulty
in the operation. As soon as the tobacco is taken from the
hill and housed, we commence with a low d