SELECTION OF SEED. 31 



intellectual beings, and they ought to know more than a cow, 

 perhaps. 



Mr. CojMINS. I can see some difficulties which I think 

 may arise from growing seed-corn in the manner suggested 

 by Capt. Moore. My own time for selecting seed-corn is at 

 husking. I can select better ears then than I can if I go 

 into the field when the corn is growing, and pick out the best 

 stalks. If it is cut up, as we practise cutting up our corn, 

 the ears will ripen better than they will if picked from the 

 stalk, traced, and hung up. I am inclined to think, if this 

 mode of selecting seed-corn were carried out, there would be 

 a good man}'' imperfect ears in the field : there would be a 

 good many female or pistillate organs that would not be fer- 

 tilized, and we should get a large quantity of imperfect ears. 

 I do not believe in taking seed-corn, or any other seed, from 

 imperfect specimens. I am very careful about that thing. I 

 have raised some corn for seven or eight years ; and I always 

 select my seed-corn, growing it on the same land, and I find 

 my corn has very materially improved from what it was. But 

 I think if any farmer should cut off the spindles from the 

 weak stalks hi an}'- field of corn, for the sake of getting per- 

 fect ears, he would find a large proportion of the stalks were 

 imperfect, and consequently a large proportion of the ears 

 selected would be imperfect. I may not be correct ; but I 

 have that impression. 



Mr. Whitaker. I like what Capt. Moore has said about 

 having an ideal in your mind of whatever you want to do. I 

 used to be acquainted with an old gentleman who used to 

 Bay to me, " Whitaker, it's no use trying to get any thing 

 out of a man, unless he has the thing in him to begin with." 

 He used to say a man could never make a plough, unless the 

 plough was in him ; that he could never make a shoe, unless 

 the shoe was in him. We hear a great deal said at times 

 about the imagination. Well, there is a use, a legitimate 

 one, for the imagination, as there is for every thing else. 

 There was never a man in this world who produced a 

 machine, who did not have that machine formed on his brain 

 before it was placed on paper, or constructed in wood or 

 iron. The machine was developed in his mind, and all he 

 had to do was to go to work and copy that image in his mind. 

 Now it must be the same with farmers. They are the most 



