Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/229

 burn. I believe a better way would be to heat bricks, and having enclosed the tobacco in a box, keep the heat up with them. When it has become dry in this way, sprinkle sparingly with the best rum. I do not know whether this last is necessary, or only a fancy of my friend's who was rather partial that way.

The leaves now have lost their identity, and look like—well, I do not know exactly what,—very unsightly, anyway. Now take a handful of leaves and work and twist them into a lump, in the fingers, and having done so wrap a fresh leaf round it and then lay it in a small box or anything to be pressed. My friend put his into small old-fashioned fig-drums,which are made of very thin wood (shaving I think), and having nothing more appropriate he used an old letter-press for the purpose of pressing.

He had only a small quantity the season I assisted him at the process, but the following year I was told he pressed quite a large quantity in a cheese mould and press. This was making tobacco under difficulties, and of course, not being a smoker myself, I cannot say whether it was any good or not. Of one thing I am certain, and that is that good, bad or indifferent the old man himself smoked no other while he had a bit of that left. He smoked the tobacco he made and pronounced it first-class.

Unlike tobacco, this is very simply made. A woman with a good bread-grater and plenty of water can make enough from a row of plants in her own garden to last her family for a year. I am not writing from hearsay or only a partial knowledge of this matter, for I have made it myself, aye, and made so much from my own few roots, that I was enabled to use it instead of starch in the laundry.

Arrowroot grows in almost any fairly rich soil, and is a capital crop to put in after some surface crop, as oats, barley, maize. It should not be put in land too freshly manured or it grows too much to leaf. It will yield as much as 14 to 16 tons of bulbs per acre, and upon some soils more than that.

It is a very good crop for a young selector farmer to put in, particularly if no one else about has done so, as he will then have a certain market for it in town. From seven to eight months after planting the crop is ready for digging. Frost does not really injure it, for though it kills the tops, it tends to concentrate the glutine matter in the bulbs. When ripe, the tops wither, and digging the bulbs is not unlike potato-digging.

. —The bulbs are first well washed and then grated into pulp, for this purpose a grater can be very easily improvised from a piece of tin or galvanised iron with a number of holes made