[21]

20

growth the best of tobacco lands. They are generally overgrown with pines, with an undergrowth of whortleberry, chincapin and sourwood and other bushes. The pines growing to about two feet in diameter in about twenty years. About fifteen or twenty years are required for the resuscitation of old worn out lands. One field was planted in corn in 1850 and the yield was so poor that the fence was removed. Twenty-six years later it was cleared and planted in tobacco which brought fifty cents per pound for the whole crop. This field was put in tobacco for five years in succession and the last crop was better than the first. The land was treated the first year with twohundred pounds of commercial fertilizer, and the next four years it received yearly applications of stable manure and fertilizers in [chill?]. Some farmers think that the lands are exhaustible and require