Manure.

Rubbish from stables and barn yards, which has been exposed to rain and sun, until the greater portion of the ammonia and other stimulants are lost, will not do for tobacco lands. Dig compost pits, not deeper than five feet, otherwise as large as you like; brick and face with cement. Melt mutton suet, whilst hot stir in enough pulverized whiting to make a good thick paint; stir, keep it hot, and apply to the cement with a stiff brush; this stops the pores in the cement. Take two boards five feet long, six inches wide and one inch thick; nail them together, flat and edge flush; stand this in the corner of the vat; put a little hand pump in here. Burn all the old tobacco stalks; put the ash under cover and keep it dry; put a layer of barnyard and stable manure into the pit every day; sprinkle a few pounds of lime over the manure, not enough to set the pit on fire, but just sufficient to shorten the the straw; add any smashed up bones, old boots or leather, chopped up, and fowl's droppings; scatter them over the manure; throw on enough water, or kitchen slops, which is better, to moisten the straw; two hours after cover with a couple of inches of the stalk ash. When the liquor begins to make, punch some holes through the compost with a crowbar or pointed stick, pump up the liquor and throw it over the compost. When you want to use the manure mix it until it absorbs as much of the liquor as possible. Fall or spring (when used), spread this over the land and plough in immediately day by day. The liquor left in the vat mix into a thick mortar, with rich spongy loam. Dig a hole in clayey ground, put the paste into the hole; cover with a waterproof cover of earth or wood until wanted for the seed bed; mix to a thin paste with page 16 water spread over the bed and dig in; roof the compost, pit to keep out the rain. To a fairly intelligent man the above is sufficient. Compost made this way is a great recouper for tobacco lands.

At the late Industrial Exhibition in Wellington there was leaf tobacco, exhibited, I think, by one of the Northern Companies. Understand, I do not want to thrust a knife injuriously into any portion of the tobacco industry in the colony. Far from it. The leaf was well grown, of good color, not worm eaten, and thoroughly dried; about equal in value and quality to Maysville Kentucky. From the appearance of the sample exhibited I am convinced that the soil on which it was grown would produce a much finer and more costly article. I think the leaf was lacking in saltpetre. This constituent can be added to leaf; but as it is very easy to overdo it and spoil the leaf, I had better not explain the operation. There are processes for softening the rank flavor of low class tobaccos, and to give a white ash to dark burning leaf; but the leaf so manipulated is no imitation of a superior quality of tobacco, it is only a poor leaf slightly improved and nothing more. My advice to growers—sell all the coarse rank leaf on hand and produce no more of it; procure some first-class seed at any cost; nurse and watch the growing plants carefully as the Alchemists of old watched their bubbling crucibles, and you will find, or I am much mistaken, what they did not find, success at the bottom. Keep at this until you have produced leaf that an honest practical cigar maker, one that has seen and knows something about the smoke world, pronounces to be prime, pack that carefully and send it to London, the market of the world. If the right thing it will be stamped with the Hall Mark of competition. Once marked, the quality of the leaf is guaranteed to manufacturers in all parts of the world.