When sown in the Fall, the seed is not previously sprouted. After sowing, the bed is compacted by rolling, tramping, or clapping with a board. The plants are carefully nursed by liquid manuring and by weeding. The young plants are generally large enough for transplanting by the 1st of June. The land for the main crop—that is, into which the plants are transplanted from the seed-bed—is ploughed in the Fall after the crop of the previous year, and twice in the spring—in May, and just before the 1st of June. Coarse and rough manures are applied with the autumn ploughing, and finer well-rotted sorts in May. After the last ploughing, the land is thoroughly pulverised by harrows or drags, and marked off for the plant. The varieties of tobacco grown are either the seed-leaf or the Spanish. If the former, the plants are placed two and a half feet by three feet apart; but if the latter, three feet by a foot and a half. Thus, if the seed-leaf variety, some five thousand five hundred plants are used to the acre; and if the Spanish, nine thousand six hundred. As soon as the soil is in proper condition to work after the plants have been set out, a cultivator with five teeth is run between the rows, and this is kept up once or twice a week, until the field has been gone over five or six times. The crop is hoed twice—once after the cultivator has been run through the first time. Very little earth is put round the plant, level cultivation being preferred. In some portions of the district, a horse-hoe is used in cultivating the crop; this implement, from its peculiar construction, enables the operator to go very near each plant and stir every portion of the soil. In very small patches, the cultivation is done entirely with the hoe, which is kept up every week until the plants are so large that they cannot be worked without breaking the leaves.