the good grades must be tied in bundles containing only five or six leaves. Great neatness should be observed in tying the bundles. The tie leaf should be small. This is taken in the right hand and smoothed out at the tail end, doubled so that the inside surface of the leaf forms the outside of the wrapper. A narrow band is made of the leaf, not more than one inch in width. The band, with the stem downward, is wrapped tightly twice around the butts of the stems, and then the tie is tucked between the leaves. This makes the head an inch long. It differs from the tie of the seedleaf tobacco. The latter is tied, with the butt of the stem an inch or more below the end of the bundle. As each bundle is tied, it should be run through the hands, well straightened and compressed and laid carefully in piles.

During the prevalence of dry winds or cold weather, the exposed portion of tobacco, even when in bulk, becomes so dry that it may not be handled without. doing it great injury. To prevent this, blankets, or straw, or a wagon sheet, should be put all around the bulk. This covering, kept damp, will prevent the exposed leaves, or parts of leaves, from drying.

By providing a close room heated by a stove, with a vessel of water on top, stripping may be carried on during very severe cold weather. Otherwise the tobacco will become very dry and harsh and will be damaged by breaking or crumbling.

However good the order of the tobacco when hanging up may apparently be in cold weather, it should not be taken down from the tier poles, for if a warm spell of weather should supervene, it is almost certain to become soured or "funked." Much tobacco is damaged beyond remedy by not observing this caution. Many planters, by taking their product to market in a condition that it will not pass the ordeal of the spring fermentation, lose all their profits. Those who buy it in this condition

are compelled to rehandle it. More money is made by properly assorting, handling and "ordering" the tobacco crop than by growing it. When the crop is hurried to market in a condition that it will not keep, the rehandlers of tobacco and the local manufacturers are the only competitors for it. The foreign buyers are excluded by its unsafe condition.

It must not be inferred that it is necessary to bulk the tobacco before it can be stripped. Many successful managers of tobacco prefer to take it down from the tier poles only as it is required for stripping. The leaves are much more readily examined by this method, for they are not pressed together as they are after lying in bulk. Much time is, therefore, saved in assorting. The chief advantages in having it in bulk are: 1. That it is always in condition to be handled, and in bad weather the time may be utilized in stripping, while the tobacco if hanging up would be dry. 2. If taken down in the right condition or order, it need not be rehung on the sticks and tier poles after it is stripped. 3. It is less liable to be weather-beaten, or broken by winds that sometimes find entrance to the barns. Tobacco is also injured by frequent alternations of dryness and humidity, and these changes cannot take place when in bulk.

"Ordering" Heavy Shipping Leaf.-Should it happen that the tobacco, when stripped, is too high in case for prizing, it must be rehung on the sticks. It ofter occurs that the leafy part is in right order, but the stem is too damp, or the reverse may happen, that the stem is in right condition, but the leafy part is either too dry or too damp. The leafy part should be pliant, but not sufficiently so to show translucent spots when pressed between the finger and thumb. The stems should be pliant, but not limp, and they should break a few inches below the head when the bundle is bent at right angles.

Even when it becomes necessary to reorder tobacco, it is not expedient to attempt to do so during the winter months. And it is best not to hang it on the tier poles until spring approaches, for during the winter the snows are apt to beat in upon it. The winds injure it, and if the weather becomes very moist, the heads fall to one side and get into a crooked condition, not easily straightened. When stripped too high, let 16 or 18 bundles be put on a stick, and "shingle" the sticks, filled with tobacco, on an elevated platform, making "coops" four or five feet high. The sticks give ventilation to the interior of the pile, and lessen the danger to be apprehended from funking, even should warm weather ensue.

When the drying winds of spring come, the sticks should be elevated to the tier poles so the tobacco may be "dried out." The first warm rain that comes will put it in suitable condition to take down again. A careful watch should be kept that it does not get too high in case. It should be "struck" down just before it appears to be sufficiently high in case, for the growing humidity continues a while, even after it is taken down. Some of the best "ordering" seasons come without a drop of rain. A warm, South wind surcharged with moisture will do the work of ordering much more uniformly than a rain. A "coming season" only should be utilized, that is to say, when the tobacco goes from a dry to a humid condition. A "going out season" is when it has been too high in case and drying winds bring it seemingly to the proper order or condition. If taken down in a "going out season" it will be found that the stems are too moist for the leaf, and there will be no uniformity in the order.

When the tobacco is rightly ordered after it is stripped, it must be put in a bulk preparatory to prizing and to preserve its right order or condition. A plat

form, four and one-half feet wide and as long as may be necessary to hold the tobacco to be bulked, is made a foot, or more, above the surface of the ground, unless the stripping room has a plank floor, which will answer for a platform. One man gets on the platform and one or two bundles at a time are handed to him, after being thoroughly straightened and squeezed. A course is run he entire length of the platform with the heads coinciding with its outer edge. Another is similarly run on the opposite side of the platform. Then two courses are run between these, the heads of the bundles resting midway the first course, and the tails overlapping the center line of the bulk. These four courses form one layer, and these layers are repeated until all the tobacco is put in bulk. In laying down the bundles, the man who bulks gets on his knees and packs before him, laying the bundles flat and drawing them closely together. In bulking the heavy-shipping tobacco, the leaves are never permitted to flare out fanlike, but the bundles are kept as nearly as possible in a cylindrical form. When the bulk is finished, it is covered with planks, or tobacco sticks, laid evenly over the top and heavily weighted with logs or rocks. In two or three weeks the tobacco will smell as sweet as a rose and is ready to be put in the hogshead.

The hogsheads for shipping tobacco vary in sizes, but the most approved sizes are 56 inches high and 42 inches in diameter at the head, or 54 inches high and 38 to 44 inches in diameter. In some districts the hogsheads are made 60 inches high, or even 72 inches high by 50 inches in diameter, but these sizes are not popular with buyers.

The casks are usually made of white oak staves rived and drawn, but sometimes they are sawed. Hoops for banding the casks are made of the sap part, with a little of the heart of a young, white oak tree, though