DAIRY, SEED IMPROVEMENT, STOCK BREEDERS' MEETINGS. 285 



In certain sections of Pennsylvania, we do not have more 

 than 100 or even 90 days of corn growing weather. 



Member. We had only about ten days this past season. 



If you had only ten days, did you import the com you have 

 out there? 



Answer. It grew in spite of tlie weather. 



If you can grow stuff in spite of the weather, you are just 

 the fellows we wiant. We will take that 90-day proposition. 

 Out of the 90 days the probabilities are you will have only about 

 50 or 60 days when there is much corn made. You know it 

 takes heat to make corn, because corn is nothing more or less 

 than stored up sunliglht, and you must have sunlight and heat in 

 order to make corn. We should study the cornstalk from the 

 standpoint of the fact that it has the capacity to store up the 

 largest amotmt, in all probability, of human food, of any plant 

 we raise. It may be you can grow more potatoes for human 

 food, but it is true about the corn with us. In York county, 

 Pennsylvaoia, we have a Boys' Corn Growing Club, and we try 

 tO' instruct our boys to go into the field's and select the corn- 

 stalk that will grow the largest amount of corn, within the lim- 

 its of our season, and ripen it. I have not seen it up here in 

 Maine, so I must tell you what kind of a cornstalk we want. 

 It is about ten feet tall. We have cornstalks down in Penn- 

 sylvania which are 18 feet tall, hut we do not want the boys to 

 select a cornstalk of that size, (because there is too much energy 

 of the sun stored up in the development of the stalk. We do 

 not raise corn for the stalk, but we raise corn for corn, and the 

 stalk that will produce the largest amount of shelled com, is 

 w^hat we are trying to produce. I suppose you people who are 

 developing potatoes are working along the same line. We want 

 a ten-foot stalk, and we want that stalk to have, first, a splendid 

 root system. When we try to select a seed stalk, we try to pull it 

 up. If it comes up easily, we do not want it, because it has not 

 a strong root system. We want that stalk to be i 1-4 or i 1-2 

 inches in diameter, at the base, of a dark green color, and the 

 foliage aibout six inches apart on an average, and we want 

 these leaves to be broad, long and corrugated, because they 

 expose a larger surface to the action of sunlight by those cor- 

 rugations. 



