er
around 1700, from five to nine leaves were left on the plant, depending
on the strength of the soil.

After topping, the plant grew no higher, but the leaves grew larger and
heavier and sprouts or suckers appeared at the junction of the stalk
and the leaf stem. If allowed to grow they injured the marketable
quality of tobacco by taking up plant food that would have gone into
the leaves. These suckers were removed by pinching them off with the
thumb and finger nails. Owing to his laziness or ignorance, the Indian
did not top his tobacco, though he did keep the suckers out. Tobacco
that has been topped will produce a second set of suckers once the
first growth has been removed. If the tobacco is not topped, only three
or four suckers will appear, and these grow in the very top of the
plant. During the course of the growing season the colonial planter had
two sets of suckers to remove, from the junction of each leaf and from
the bottom to the top of the plant, whereas the Indian had only a total
of three or four per plant. Thus it appears that the planter learned
from his own experience to top tobacco, and that it was a laborious
though profitable task. It has been said that topping was first used as
a means of limiting the production of tobacco to the very best grades
by the planters as early as the 1620's.

Only a planter with considerable experience could tell when the plant
was ripe for harvest. This no doubt accounts for much of the inferior
tobacco produced in the early days of the colony. Planters usually had
their own individual methods of determining when a plant was ripe for
cutting. Some thought the plants were ripe and ready to cut when a
vigorous growth of suckers appeared around the root; others believed
the plant was ripe when the top leaves of the plant became covered with
yellow spots and "rolled over," touching the ground. Occasionally it
had to be cut regardless of its maturity to save it from the frost.

During the early days at Jamestown the tobacco was harvested by pulling
the ripe leaves from the plants growing in the fields. The leaves were
then piled in heaps and covered with hay to be cured by sweating. In
1617, a Mr. Lambert discovered that the leaves cured better when strung
on lines than when sweated under the hay. This innovation was further
facilitated in 1618 when Governor Argall prohibited the use of hay to
sweat tobacco, owing to the scarcity of fodder for the cattle. It was
probably