58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



this work to perform, and it has proved the most satisfac- 

 tory which has engaged my attention. 



Some of the most important facts connected with the new 

 agriculture relate to the nature and nutritive value of the 

 different products of our soils. We now understand the 

 actual and relative values of corn, wheat, oats, barley, &c., 

 and also we understand the value of some root and other 

 crops not known to the old agriculture. The value of our 

 corn as a nitrogenous or sustaining food for men and ani- 

 mals, and also as a fattening food, is clearly recognized by 

 every good farmer. It is well adapted to our New-England 

 soils, and is by far the surest and most remunerative of all 

 the cereals. Instead of the crop of twenty-five or thirty 

 bushels to the acre, which our forefathers under their system 

 were able to obtain, eighty and even one hundred bushels 

 are now not unusual upon our best fertilized lands. It must 

 be indeed an extraordinary season when the crop fails : in 

 fact, may I ask of you, gentlemen, the question. Did it ever 

 fail? Perhaps it did in the cold season of 1816; but that 

 was a phenomenal or exceptional jesn^ with frost every 

 month from January to December. The past summer has 

 been, in certain sections of our State, perhaps as unfavorable 

 as any within the experience of most of us ; and yet the crop 

 has been fairly remunerative. In Essex County the rainfall 

 was less than three-eighths of an inch in amount from the 

 20th of June to the 26th of July ; and nobly did this cereal 

 bear up under the intense drought. What other of all our 

 crops withstood it so well, and gave such fair returns ? The 

 corn-crop is the most promising of all under the new agri- 

 culture ; and we must largely increase the acreage devoted 

 to it in the coming years. 



Our best varieties of New-England corn afford by analysis, 

 in one hundred parts of 



Flesh-forming principles (gluten and albumen) . . 12.60 



Fat-forming principles, gum, starch, sugar, oil, &c. . 77.09 



Salts (mineral) 1.31 



Water 9.00 



100.00 



This result teaches us that, in corn, we have stored up for 

 the use of men and animals a vast proportion of those rich 



