Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/464

 low price, he decided to substitute for it in the following year the sweet-scented, because this was capable of being packed in greater bulk and was therefore cheaper to transport. The Oronoco was grown on bottom lands remarkable for their fertility, the aim of those who were engaged in cultivating it being to make it extremely heavy, and to bring it to the color of a kite&#8217;s foot. The shape of the leaf of this variety was more elongated and sharper at the end than that of the sweet-scented, causing it to resemble the ear of the fox. The leaf of the sweet-scented was rounder and finer in its fibre. The excellence of the seeds of both was tested by the readiness and brilliancy with which they flashed when cast into the fire. In laying off a plant bed, a spot of ground was selected that was found to be composed of a rich mould. The seeds were sown about the middle of January. It seems to have been due to a suggestion of Clayton that the method was introduced of steeping them in an infusion of soot and stable manure before they were scattered over the surface of the plant bed, the object of which was to quicken the process of germination; it was also the habit to mix them with ashes and then to sow them broadcast, as it was supposed that a more even distribution was thus ensured.

The plants, before they were removed from the bed in the woods to the field where they were to be set, were exposed, as in more recent times, to the depredation of a small fly which devoured the plume; no effort seems to have been made to divert the attention of this insect from the young tobacco by cultivating, around the boundaries