44 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



report would teach very much th.at should be known, and it 

 would be found that oftentimes the poorer corn for the farmer 

 to grow has received the encouragement of a premium. 



Seed corn — Its improvement at the foundation of the most 

 successful growing of corn. Its principles of selection the 

 same common sense principles which govern the most suc- 

 cessful practices in all branches of farming. If we have 

 wandered from common sense, therein we have erred, and 

 are teaching error. If our statements appeal to your com- 

 mon sense, then give the principles a trial ; and right or 

 wrong, once recognizing the need of improvement, experience 

 will correct errors, establish truths, and result in advantages 

 which to state in the fullness of the possibilities, would now 

 seem visionary. 



In garden varieties of corn we find prolificacy quite gen- 

 eral, and under 'proper cultivation two ears to a stalk seems 

 more the rule than does one ear to the stalk in a field variety. 

 This has been accomplished through the greater care exercised 

 in selecting the seed, and by a more complete system of cul- 

 tivation. Thei'e is room for further selection even here, as 

 all who have studied a corn-field must know, yet so far 

 superior is the prolificacy of garden corn that we may safely 

 urge this accomplished fact as a standard towards which 

 farmers should aspire. What gardeners have done the former 

 should do, and he should be satisfied with no less. 



In pop corn we have a variety dwarf in ear, and dwarf in 

 stature, but under favorable circumstances its yield is equal 

 to that of our larger field varieties. It has, however, the 

 objection, that the husking of so many small ears as are 

 required for a bushel, of product is slow and laborious. Yet 

 it is prolific ; more often are four or five or seven ears formed 

 to a stalk than on other corn plants, and from this variety has 

 seemingly been derived some of the kinds known as branching 

 corn. The study of the history and habits of the pop corn is 

 sufficient to convince that the same intelligence which has 

 produced this corn, if used in the pro^^er direction on field 



