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thousand two hundred and thirty-five bushels. It will be 

 perceived at once, comparatively speaking, ours is not a corn 

 growing region, although from the amount of land devoted 

 to this crop we might favorably compare with some counties 

 in more congenial latitudes. The manner of preparing the 

 ground is to haul out all the barn-yard manure we can make 

 during the summer and winter, and scatter it over the field or 

 over the most unproductive part, if we have not enough to 

 reach further, plow the ground up early and deep, give it a 

 going over once with the harrow, lay it out into rows from 

 three to four feet apart each way with the shovel plow, plant 

 along the first part of May, from three to four grains in a 

 hill, cover tolerable deep, and then trust to the Lord for the 

 "early and latter rain" to send forth its green and tender 

 blade in due season. Some of our experimental farmers are 

 trying the eflects of plaster on the hill as soon as the corn is 

 cleverly out of the ground; so far as it has been tried, it 

 works well ; about a table spoonfull to the hill is all sufficient. 

 The corn is gone into, first with a harrow, sometimes a 

 two horse one — straddling a row, and sometimes with the 

 cultivator or shovel plow. The main thing is to get the start 

 of the weeds let the instrument be what it will, and to follow 

 it up through the whole season until you have exterminated 

 the whole number — and their name is legion. Good farmers 

 among us keep passing through their corn one way after the 

 other from the time it first comes up, without hardly any 

 cessation, until it begins to tassel out and shoot forth its ears. 

 I will mention in this connection, that an improved mode of 

 tillage begins to obtain among us, especially on heavy clay 

 soils, of plowing up our corn ground late in the fall, subject- 

 ing it to the fertilizing effects of freezing and thawing through 

 the winter, and Ihen cross plowing in the spring followed by 

 the cultivation above described. Owing to the extraordinary 

 wet spring, followed by a long parching drought, our corn 

 crop the past season would average but little over half a 

 crop — say about twenty-five bushels to the acre. The varie- 



