36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The uses and the market will confine the choice of kinds to 

 some of the field varieties, and the exigencies of the Maine 

 climate will cause her farmers to select a flint variety of the 

 field division. The most profitable variety is the one which 

 will furnish not the most grain necessarily, but the largest 

 gross return from the field. We mean by this, that in a stock 

 feeding country where provender must be provided for long 

 winter stabling, the fodder of corn has a value, and that this 

 value must be considered in our estimate of the field. 



Under ordinary seasons and ordinary culture, with our 

 Northern varieties of corn, alwut 80 lbs. of stover in an air 

 dry condition may be calculated to accompany each bushel of 

 grain, sometimes more, sometimes less. If this stover is 

 fine stalked and is harvested in reasonably good condition, it 

 is capable, with the addition of a little meal or cotton seed, 

 of replacing hay, and will be found worth, as fed whole to 

 cows, about six-tenths the value of good hay. If, however, 

 this stover is coarse stalked, it is not so readily consumed by 

 the cows, and is certainly not worth in practice one half this, 

 or three-tenths, and we have seen stover that we have esti- 

 mated even less. It is thus seen, if we are correct, that two 

 fields may yield the same amount of grain, and yet furnish a 

 gross produce of diflTerent values for the farmer. 



One principle, then, to guide us in the selection of seed 

 corn, is the fodder habits of the plant. As the cob is mor- 

 phologically a branch, and as a bra*ich need not be expected 

 to be larger than the stem which puts it forth, we would 

 expect a corn with a large cob to have been produced from a 

 large stock, and thus from a coarse foddered plant. How- 

 ever the explanation, a quite extensive observation confirms 

 to us the fact. Hence in selectins: a seed ear, we should 

 select one with a small cob, as thus being more likely to give 

 us a small stalk to our fodder. 



Should an 8 or 12-rowed corn be taken? Why not a 36- 

 rowed corn? It is sufficient that experience shows that a 

 36-rowed corn is not adapted to the Maine climate. Is 

 12-rowed corn as well adapted to the Maine climate as an 



