“III. Collect manure in season and out of season, and from every available source—from the fence corners, the ditch-banks, the urinal, the ash-pile. Distribute it with a liberal hand; nothing short of princely liberality will answer. Plough it under (both the home-made and the commercial) in _February_, that it may become thoroughly incorporated in the soil and be ready to answer to the first and every call of the growing plant. Often (we believe generally) the greater part of manure applied to tobacco—and this is true of the ‘bought’ fertilizer as well as of that made on the farm—is lost to that crop from being applied too late. Don’t wait to apply your dearly-purchased guano in the hill or the drill from fear that, if applied sooner, it will vanish into thin air before the plant needs it. This is an exploded fallacy. Experience, our best teacher, has demonstrated beyond cavil that stable and commercial manure are most efficacious when used in conjunction. In no other way can they be so intimately intermixed as by ploughing them under—the one broadcasted on the other—at an early period of the preparation of the tobacco lot. This second ploughing should not be so deep as the first; an average of three to four inches is about the right depth. “IV. Early in May (in the main tobacco belt to which this article chiefly refers, that is to say, between the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels of north latitude), re-plough the land to about the depth of the February ploughing, and drag and cross-drag, and, if need be, drag it again, until the soil is brought to the finest possible tilth. Thus you augment many fold the probabilities of a ‘stand’ on the first planting, and lessen materially the subsequent labour of cultivation. Plant on ‘lists’ (narrow beds made by throwing four furrows together with the mould-board plough) rather than in hills, if for no other reason than that having now, if never before, to pay wages in some shape to labour, whenever and wherever possible horse-power should be substituted for man-power—the plough for the hoe. “V. Plant as early as possible after a continuance of pleasant spring weather is assured. Seek to have a _forward_ crop, as the benefits claimed for a late one from the fall dews do not compensate for the many advantages resulting from early maturity. Make it an inflexible rule to plant no tobacco after the 10th of July—we mean, of course, in the tobacco belt we have named. Where one good crop is made from later planting ninety-nine prove utter failures. Far better _rub out and start afresh the next year_. Take pains in transplanting, that little or no replanting may be necessary. The cut-worm being a prime cause of most of the trouble in securing a stand, hunt it assiduously and particularly in the early morning when it can most readily be found.