had it not been discovered that turkeys are particularly dexterous at finding them, eat them up voraciously, and prefer them to every other food.  For this purpose every planter keeps a flock of turkeys, which he has driven into the tobacco grounds every day by a little negro that can do nothing else; these keep his tobacco more clear from horn worms than all the hands he has got could do were they employed solely for that end.  When the tops are nipped off, a few plants are left untouched for seed.  On the plants that have been topped, young shoots are apt to spring out, which are termed suckers, and are carefully and constantly broken off lest they should draw too much of the nourishment and substance from the leaves of the plant.  This operation is also performed from time to time, and is called “suckering tobacco.”  For some time before it is ripe, or ready for cutting, the ground is perfectly covered with leaves, which have increased to a prodigious size, and then the plants are generally about three feet high.  When it is ripe, a clammy moisture or exudation comes forth upon the leaves, which appear, as it were, ready to become spotted, and they are then of a great weight and substance.  The tobacco is cut when the sun is powerful, but not in the morning and evening.  The plant, if large, is split down the middle, and cut off two or three inches below the extremity of the split; it is then turned directly bottom upwards, for the sun to kill it more speedily, to enable the laborers to carry it out of the field, else the leaves would break off in transporting it to the scaffold.  The plants are cut only as they become ripe, for a field never ripens altogether.  There is generally a second cutting likewise, for the stalk vegetates and shoots forth again, and in good land, with favorable seasons, there is a third cutting also procured, notwithstanding acts of the Legislature to prevent cutting tobacco even a second time.

When the tobacco plants are cut and brought to the scaffolds, which are generally erected all around the tobacco houses, they are placed with the split across a small oak stick, an inch and better in diameter and four feet and a half long, so close as each plant just to touch the other without bruising or pressing.  These sticks are then placed on the scaffolds, with the tobacco thus suspended in the middle, to dry or cure, and are called tobacco sticks.  As the plants advance in curing, the sticks are removed from the scaffolds out of doors into the tobacco house, on to other scaffolds erected therein in successive regular gradations from the bottom to the top of the roof, being placed higher as the tobacco approaches to a perfect cure, until the house is all filled and the tobacco quite cured, and this cure is frequently promoted by making fires on the floor below.  When the tobacco house is quite full, and there is still more tobacco to bring in, all that is within the house is struck, and taken down, and